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Signa Holding, the central company of René Benko’s collapsing luxury property empire, is facing €3.5bn more in claims from creditors than previously disclosed, its administrator has said.
Christof Stapf, who took control of Signa Holding last week after a restructuring by management failed, told creditors that in total 302 parties had listed outstanding debts of more than €8.6bn.
The company’s management said in its insolvency filing on November 29 that they expected claims totalling about €5.1bn.
The claims lodged include €713mn from the UAE’s Mubadala and €279mn from Qatar’s AM1, and €1.6bn that other Signa group entities said was transferred to the central holding company in the run-up to its collapse.
Presenting his findings to creditors in Vienna on Monday lunchtime, Stapf said he intended to dispute almost all of the debts, according to a readout of the meeting seen by the Financial Times.
In particular, he said he would refuse to recognise the claims made by other Signa group entities.
Those include the two other holding companies Signa Development and Signa Prime. Management at the two companies are rushing to monetise assets to pay off their own lenders.
Stapf’s decision is likely to greatly complicate their efforts, but shows the extent to which Signa’s sprawling corporate network has begun to pit different shareholders and creditor groups against each other.
Signa Development transferred hundreds of millions in cash to other Signa entities in the past year, which the company’s management said at the time were “ordinary . . . business cash management operations”.
Creditors have been left dumbfounded at the absence of cash on its balance sheet despite large asset sales in the past year. The FT reported last week that the company also transferred more than €300mn to non-Signa group entities controlled by Benko’s family foundation.
“Co-ordination with the other insolvency administrators of the Signa group in the form of a cross-group steering committee was not possible due to the different interests, despite considerable efforts by the insolvency administrator of the holding company,” Stapf told creditors on Monday.
Signa’s total debt — spread across an unconsolidated network of more than 1,000 companies built up over the past decade by Benko — remains unknown, but Stapf’s disclosures will fuel concerns among creditors that it may be significantly larger than anticipated.
Analysts at JPMorgan estimated Signa entities owed a total of €13bn in November.
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