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“Signa Project Office 2nd floor” is written on a sign, and you go up a small staircase into a container. Work is underway on the construction site at the historic Schicklerhaus in Berlin, between Alexanderplatz and the Spree – including on this day at the end of October, when several Signa construction projects came to a standstill because the Austrian investor René Benko’s company ran out of money.
Construction workers drive wheelbarrows around, two cranes reach into the sky above the massive building complex with a neoclassical facade. On the barrier you can see sketches of what will soon be finished here: “Beam – A project by Signa” is written there and “Premium office-space to rent”. In addition, the name of a Signa employee who future tenants of the planned 24,000 square meters of luxury office space can contact – with email address and cell phone number.
One might get the impression that everything is going according to plan here and there is no trace of a crisis. The only minor flaw is that the beam no longer belongs to Signa.
The Schicklerhaus is one of the properties that Benko’s group has already sold in recent months to bring money into its coffers. In May, Signa investor Klaus-Michael Kühne bought in with 50 percent, for a three-digit million sum – which Benko sold to his backers and partners as a sign of Kühne’s trust. In mid-September, the logistics billionaire quietly took over the entire Beam.
Since then, the situation at Signa has deteriorated dramatically. A mix of rising interest rates and financing costs, falling property values and home-made mistakes threatens Benko’s empire of real estate and retail chains. There are new warning signs almost every day: financial holes, construction stops on prestige projects like Hamburg’s Elbtower, emergency sales. A wave of bankruptcies has already rolled through Signa’s sports retail division. The rating agency Fitch recently downgraded a real estate subsidiary’s bond to junk status.
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