When did financial juggler René Benko’s opaque Signa construction run out of money? This question may preoccupy the courts in the near future.
As is known, the parent company Signa Holding has been insolvent since the end of November 2023, followed by the main subsidiaries Signa Prime and Signa Development at the end of December.
According to confidential Signa documents available to ‘News’ and ‘Krone’, the then boss of Signa Prime Selection AG asked his investors around Christmas 2022 to postpone profit distributions for the 2021 financial year. Only the German RAG Foundation did so and the Hamburg billionaire Klaus -Michael Kühne, who had recently invested over half a billion euros through his holding company, did not interfere and had their dividends transferred to them. Kühne received 16.5 million euros from Signa Prime and eleven million euros from the RAG Foundation. René Benko was also involved in the negotiations, although in fact and according to the company register he did not hold an official position at Signa.
Eight percent interest
According to research by ‘Krone’, the other partners were promised a payout in mid-May 2023. In addition, the “interest for the grace period” must be a respectable eight percent.
Quite remarkable: the then CEO of Signa Prime Selection AG assured investors around Christmas 2022 that no bonus payments would be made to the board of directors until May 15, 2023. A few months later it was announced that for the catastrophic year 2022 alone, Signa Prime’s four-member board had been awarded bonuses totaling 19 million euros, resulting in losses of over a billion euros.
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.
