Karstadt – Federal Cartel Office approves takeover Karstadt – Süddeutsche.de

Karstadt – Federal Cartel Office approves takeover Karstadt – Süddeutsche.de

Now is the change of ownership at Karstadt nothing in the way: The Federal Cartel Office has approved the acquisition. But the new owners are facing a difficult task.

• The Federal Cartel Office gives its approval for the acceptance of the Karstadt department stores by the Signa Holding.
• The new owner René Benko now faces the task of getting Karstadt out of the red .

Now René Benko has succeeded, the last step to acquire Karstadt. The Bundeskartellamt has given its consent for the Signa Holding 88 Karstadt department stores purchases. “Ultimately here an investor is replaced by another. At the market position of the individual Karstadt department stores thereby changes from a competitive point of view nothing,” says Andreas Mundt, president of the Federal Cartel Office.

Benko now includes the entire Karstadt Holding

The Signa Holding, headed by the Austrian real estate dealer René Benko had the Karstadt department stores last week, taken over from the previous owners, the financial investor Nicolas Berggruen. To get all the Karstadt department stores are reunited under a holding company. Signa had in October of last year already count 75 percent of the shares in the sport worldwide and the premium segment to the luxury homes Oberpollinger (Munich), Alsterhaus (Hamburg) and KaDeWe (Berlin) purchased.

Karstadt infected still deep in crisis

Last Karstadt was always slipped further into the red. In the current fiscal year to end September Karstadt GmbH made a loss of 131.1 million euros. Niklas Berggruen admitted in an interview an error in the Karstadt rehabilitation. It was wrong not to act earlier and more decisively in the renovation and to have the necessary incisions avoided.