Dusseldorf The two sides of the trading world of the Austrian billionaire René Benko met unabated on Tuesday at the Carsch-Haus in Düsseldorf. Angry Galeria employees demonstrated in front of the former Kaufhof branch to keep their jobs and called on owner Benko to support them.
Inside, Benko’s Signa Group celebrated the ground-breaking ceremony for a complex project with 120 invited guests over canapés and drinks. The historic building is to be converted into the fourth department store of the KaDeWe Group at a cost of millions. Managing Director Michael Peterseim speaks of a “new era”, “we want to continue our successful concept here”.
Benko runs the KaDeWe Group with his main business partner, the Thai Central Group. Unlike the ailing Galeria, this one has no problem attracting customers to the department stores. And it’s trimmed for growth. It suits the real estate portfolio of the controversial self-made billionaire much better than most of the dreary Galeria houses.
Signa invests in the finest buildings, and estimates the value of its assets at 28 billion euros. Probably the most spectacular project of the 45-year-old in Germany is the planned Elbtower in Hamburg.
The beacon of hope for Benko’s luxury department stores is André Maeder. The manager not only heads the KaDeWe Group. From April 1, he will be the head of the entire luxury department store group of Signa and Central Group. These include well-known brands such as Selfridges and De Bijenkorf, as well as the Swiss Globus Group and Illum in Denmark.
Benko sells 49 percent of KaDeWe to Thai partners
The company is to become a “leading global luxury group”, according to a letter to the employees on the reorganization of the management team. The vision is a “reinvention of retail” and investments will continue to be made for this.
This is made possible primarily by the financial resources of the Central Group. Its owner Tos Chirathivat has just bought 49 percent of the top property Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin from the Signa Group in order to give the European partner more financial leeway again.
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The Central Group, which operates a huge network of supermarkets, department stores and shopping malls in Asia, had already financed half of the takeover of Selfridges last year. 18 luxury department stores have been added, including the flagship on London’s Oxford Street.
How closely Chirathivat personally oversees the European project is shown by the fact that the billionaire is co-chairman of the “Central-Signa European Luxury Department Stores Group” – together with Benko’s right-hand man Dieter Berninghaus.
Purchase of Selfridges for an estimated more than four billion euros
The contrast in Benko’s trading business could not be greater: On the one hand there is Galeria, which is making high losses and wants to close 47 stores in the insolvency proceedings. More than 4000 employees will lose their jobs. It is unclear when there will be growth again.
After all, Benko has promised 200 million euros in support for the renovation of the remaining 82 houses. However, he also received a state loan of 680 million euros for Galeria, most of which was lost to the state due to the insolvency.
On the other side is the KaDeWe Group, which Benko had already spun off from the Karstadt Reich in 2014. The group is investing 500 million euros in the conversion of the three stores in Germany, in addition to the Berlin parent store, the Oberpollinger in Munich and the Alsterhaus in Hamburg. The modernization of KaDeWe alone cost 300 million.
With around 2000 invited guests, André Maeder celebrated the reopening of KaDeWe in November 2022 after seven years of renovations during ongoing operations. Actor Lars Eidinger made the guests dance as a DJ. The goal: the traditional store should remain the top shopping address in Berlin.
And the group will continue to grow. In 2025, not only the Carsch-Haus in Düsseldorf will be added as the fourth department store in Germany. At the same time, the newly built Lamarr in Vienna is to open, a luxury department store with 20,000 square meters of retail space on eight floors, named after the film diva Hedy Lamarr.
With the two new stores, Central and Signa will then operate 42 luxury stores in eight European countries. The partners are said to have invested well over four billion euros last year in the takeover of Selfridges, including several magnificent properties.
David Chipperfield Architects planned new Carsch house
The plan is to increase the turnover of this group from a good five to up to eight billion euros in 2024. More than a billion of this turnover should then come from e-commerce. For comparison: Last year, Galeria had sales of 2.45 billion euros with 131 stores. The company achieved a turnover of just 145 million euros in online trading.
In order to transfer the Carsch-Haus from this dreary Kaufhof world to the glittering luxury world of KaDeWe, the traditional building is gutted and the inside is completely renovated. According to the design of the well-known architectural office of David Chipperfield, an atrium will be built on the forecourt, which will lead to the future main entrance in the basement with a large open staircase.
“Düsseldorf is getting a unique combination of traditional and modern, cool brands,” enthuses KaDeWe manager Peterseim. It will be a department store more than a hundred years old, combined with a modern shopping concept that can also be found on Oxford Street.
But the Carsch house also shows how close reality and beautiful appearances can sometimes be in the Benko world. The neoclassical building, opened in 1915, was demolished in the 1970s. Today, the house is offset 23 meters and consists of a modern concrete skeleton, onto which the old façade has been glued stone by stone.
More: Which 47 Galeria branches are affected by the closure