On Wednesday evening, the “Krone” reported on the big Benko explosion, which was accompanied by explosive asset transfers within the Signa conglomerate – just a few weeks before Signa Holding went bankrupt. On Holy Thursday, the next very central domino fell in the purposefully nested domain of the financial juggler.
The Benko Family Private Foundation, founded in 2001 by René Benko and his mother, had to file for bankruptcy at the Innsbruck Regional Court.
Hardly any liquid assets
This move did not come as a surprise: on the one hand, the foundation’s bankruptcy was apparently also caused by demands from several co-investors of the Signa Group, who had the contractually agreed right to return their shares in the confused conglomerate to Benko to give. In total, this foundation owns 66 percent of the shares in Signa Holding (10.1 percent directly, 55.97 percent indirectly through subsidiaries with sometimes strange names).
On the other hand, this Benko Foundation, based in Innsbruck, no longer had significant liquid assets at the end of 2022; The foundation itself was probably over-indebted and therefore bankrupt since the bankruptcy of Signa Holding.
According to confidential annual accounts available to the ‘Krone’, the Benko Family Private Foundation already had significantly more debts than assets as of December 31, 2022, if one ignores the value of the shares in Signa Holding, which was caused by the Signa the insolvency tsunami is almost zero: the foundation, which went bankrupt on Maundy Thursday, had only 640,953 euros in cash in its accounts at the time; last year (end of 2021) this was still 8.274 million euros.
Characteristic detail: René Benko himself borrowed 21 million euros from his foundation; As is known, he went bankrupt as an entrepreneur.
Rome is here
According to reports, Signa founder Benko has recently said goodbye to a luxury badge that for years has been inextricably linked to his alleged success as an entrepreneur: according to information from “Krone”, a South African entrepreneur may have acquired the 62-meter motor yacht RoMa. Rumored purchase price: almost 25 million euros. However, the RoMa belonged to the empire of Benko’s private foundation Laura, which is also based in Innsbruck.
The case of bankruptcies
Meanwhile, there seems to be a gold rush mood among the numerous trustees in the Signa conglomerate: according to research by ‘Krone’, the restructuring manager of the core company, Signa Prime Selection AG, alone is expected to collect around 22 million euros for its three months of clean-up work.
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.
