Owner of Berlin’s KaDeWe luxury department store files for insolvency
The group is part of Signa's crumbling real estate empire
Frankfurt — KaDeWe Group, which operates the eponymous Berlin department store and is part of the troubled Signa real estate empire, said on Monday it had filed for insolvency, the latest fallout of a widening property crisis in the region.
KaDeWe is a landmark tourist destination in Berlin, and the group also includes the Oberpollinger department store in Munich and the Alsterhaus in Hamburg.
Signa, the insolvent Austrian-based property empire that has become the biggest casualty so far in Europe’s real-estate slump, bought KaDeWe as part of a retail portfolio a decade ago.
In 2015, Signa sold a majority stake to the Thai retail conglomerate Central Group.
Since the Signa holding company filed for insolvency last year, many of its divisions have followed suit.
KaDeWe will remain open during the process.
Since it opened in 1907, the building on Wittenberg Platz, not far from the Zoologischer Garten railway station, has become a symbol of the German capital to rival the Brandenburg Gate and the television tower at Alexander Platz.
Reuters