Signa card house

Under pressure: juggler Benko runs out of cash

Signa founder Benko: installment payment to the holding company(Bild: Sepp Pail, APA/Roland Schlager, Krone KREATIV)

The head of the non-transparent Signa Group has to pay three million euros in installments for the mass of the Signa holding company. Some of the money comes from third parties. At the end of 2022, his two private foundations in Innsbruck also held hardly any significant amounts of cash.

René Benko and his Signa Group made the biggest billion-dollar bankruptcy of the Second Republic. Now the financial juggler is also coming under increasing personal pressure: the Republic of Austria has filed for insolvency against the Tyrolean - this was announced on Thursday via the "Standard".

In addition, a report by the Signa Holding administrator available to the "Krone" reveals that Benko has only paid the first installment of his three million euro payment to the estate himself. The second installment of 845,000 euros came on 8 January "from a third party". The third installment should arrive this week - also from a third party.

From the insolvency administrator's report: "The payment of the last installment of EUR 1,010,000.00 has been notified by a third party for this week."(Bild: Andreas Tischler/Vienna Press, Krone KREATIV)

Cash balances in the foundations
How is it possible that the real estate speculator, who was listed in the billionaire ranking by "Forbes" until a few weeks ago, is suddenly apparently so short of cash that he is dependent on installment payments or the support of third parties for an amount of three million euros? Can't Benko simply help himself to a loan from his private foundations, which serve to provide financial security for his family?

A closer look at the confidential balance sheets of his two most important foundations, which are available to the "Krone", provides an answer to this question:

According to the annual financial statements as of December 31, 2022, the Benko family private foundation based in Innsbruck only had cash balances at banks totaling 640,953 euros. In the previous year, 8.274 million euros were still available.

The Laura Private Foundation, which is also based in Tyrol, only had 1.836 million euros available in cash according to the last annual financial statements 13 months ago. In the previous year, things looked much rosier: 31.222 million euros were stashed away in cash accounts.

A telling detail in passing: René Benko was already in debt to the Benko family private foundation at the end of 2022. He had borrowed 21 million euros.

Bär boss has to go
Meanwhile, the collapse of the Benko card house is also affecting business partners: In Switzerland, Julius Baer confirmed the departure of bank boss Philipp Rickenbacher in connection with bad loans to the financially ailing Signa conglomerate. The bank had lent around 606 million Swiss francs (around 650 million euros) to the real estate juggler's corporate network - without sufficient collateral. Julius Baer is now writing off the loan in full. Group profit halved to 453 million francs in 2023.