While 1,300 Kika/Leiner employees are on the street after René Benko’s real estate deal, the Tyrolean spoils his Signa shareholders with dividends. The beneficiaries are all well-known – and wealthy – industrialists.
If you think of Kika/Leiner or Kaufhof/Karstadt in Germany, the employees there no longer have a good idea of the Tyrolean real estate juggler René Benko.
It is not known what the sometimes very prominent co-shareholders in the Signa companies think. But now it has been documented with what generous benefits they were considered in the past. For the 2020 financial year (more recent figures are not available), Signa Prime paid out a dividend of 220 million euros with a balance sheet profit of 819 million euros, Signa Development even 98.5 million euros with a profit of 214 million euros. The money went to various companies related to the Benko family and the other shareholders.
“Assignment takes place internally”
These are, for example, the Haselsteiner Foundation, Roland Berger, an heir to Peugeot, the Swedish family Rausing (“Tetra-Pak”), Michael Kühne (one of the richest Germans) and various insurance companies. The ten supervisory directors of the companies (including, for example, Alfred Gusenbauer or Karl Stoss) received a total of EUR 500,000 (Signa Development) or EUR 837,500 (Prime) in remuneration. The “assignment is done internally”, it says.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
