The remaining 60 locations in the chain are changing hands again.
(Photo: Real)
Dusseldorf The breakup of the Real department store chain has come to an end for the time being. The Russian SCP Retail Investments hands over Real GmbH, which has been merged to 60 locations, to the family office of the Tischendorf entrepreneurial family and a team of Real managers led by Karsten Pudzich.
According to SCP, the sale is intended to secure the future of around 60 locations and around 5,000 jobs. The locations will continue to be operated under the Real brand in the future. The transaction was contractually agreed in December 2021 and is scheduled to take effect on June 30, 2022.
It was agreed not to disclose the conditions. However, it can be assumed that SCP was willing to pay more to avoid the otherwise impending costs of processing the rest of the business.
The investor SCP bought the chain store with 276 locations from Metro in June 2020 and then resold parts of it to competitors. Even before the purchase contract was signed, SCP had agreed with Kaufland and Edeka on the transfer of entire packages from branches. At that time, the investor had taken over the entire stationary Real business, the digital business including the online marketplace real.de and 80 properties.
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For SCP, the purchase of the chain, which was in deficit for many years, was worth it. At the time, the investor had paid 300 million euros to Metro. However, the real estate alone was originally valued at 900 million euros in the Metro balance sheet. In addition, the sale of the online marketplace to Kaufland brought in an amount of around 100 million euros.
Property resold for a lot of money
SCP sold a number of the properties with the operation of the respective markets to the competitors Kaufland, Edeka and Globus. He passed on the remaining 34 Real properties to the real estate company X+Bricks, which estimated the value of these houses alone at one billion euros.
SCP had contractually committed to operate at least 50 stores itself for two years. This period expires in the middle of this year, when the resale to Tischendorf is to take effect.
Patrick Kaudewitz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of SCP Retail Investments, emphasized that the sale of Real GmbH, which will have around 60 locations in the future, is “another milestone” on the way to finding the best possible solution for the employees and the locations. “With the many years of expertise of the Real management team and the entrepreneurial experience of Dr. Sven and Dr. Annett Tischendorf has very good long-term prospects for Real,” he said.
Lawyer Sven Tischendorf, who is also scheduled to join Real’s management on July 1, is an expert in restructuring ailing companies. However, he also has the reputation that he not only specializes in the exploitation of companies, but is also quite willing to run the acquired companies in the long term as an entrepreneur.
However, the continued operation of the Real markets is anything but a sure-fire success. Because the competitors have already secured the markets with the highest turnover and the most profit. The turnover of the rest of the supermarket chain is likely to have fallen from originally more than six billion to less than one billion euros.
In order to further reduce costs, the entire purchase of goods, goods logistics and some other central functions are to be handed over to an efficient partner. According to information from the “Lebensmittelzeitung”, the retail group Rewe is under discussion.
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