Blender Benko
How the financial juggler snapped up billionaires
"Psychogram of an impostor": The German news magazine "Spiegel" investigates how Signa founder René Benko has been able to con even honorable business personalities over the years with his luxury staging.
The Signa conglomerate is insolvent, its creator bankrupt. René Benko's personal bankruptcy as an entrepreneur has also resulted in a personal "striptease". He is now dependent on his mother's help and only has a meagre fortune, reports the TT. The man, who received 26 million from Signa in 2019, currently only wants to earn 3,700 euros per month as an employee of two companies.
How was Benko able to build a castle in the air consisting of more than 1000 companies with lofty promises? How did the salesman, who trained at the dubious financial sales company AWD, boil down Europe's moneyed aristocracy? How did he manage to keep the legend of Europe's most important real estate group in the hands of this circle of billionaires even in times of incipient decline? These are the questions explored by "Der Spiegel", which paints a "psychogram of an impostor".
"Building a kind of brotherhood"
Benko "always went for the most expensive, the best" many years ago "when it came to impressing someone", notes the magazine. "In 2014, he opened his five-star Park Hyatt hotel in Vienna, brought star chefs to his Chalet N on the Arlberg and served fine red wine from Italy, sometimes at 4,000 euros a bottle. 'People like to follow someone who is a winner with their money,' says a weighty real estate investor. Benko has built himself 'a kind of brotherhood'."
There were also offices in the posh Palais Harrach and a business penthouse in Berlin's Upper West. "Two floors, around eight meters high. White marble tables, gold-colored interwoven floors, the huge round bed under a ceiling-high canopy," it says in Der Spiegel. An insider who was a guest there about a year ago told the "Krone": "Roughly estimated 2000 square meters. There were studios for bodyguards, separate wellness studios for guests. It was so insane. So obscene. I thought to myself at the time: now he's lost touch with reality."
"Sensing the greed of others"
Benko had "sensed the greed of others", Der Spiegel quotes a former companion. When the real estate speculator "charms potential investors, he likes to invite them to his yacht off the coast of Nice, arriving by helicopter or private jet. If someone is a passionate skier, Benko offers Chalet N, his private hotel in the Alps, which only opens on request. 'Then there were the coolest ski instructors, the most beautiful rooms, the most expensive wine,' says someone who has had this pleasure. Benko takes the car baron Robert Peugeot hunting in Tyrol. He appreciates that. And then invests heavily."
For a long time, the young Benko was allowed "the nouveau riche attitude", one investor told the magazine. He was hard-working, hungry, overzealous. "Huge mouth. But great deals and a quick mind." He was forgiven for sometimes overshooting the mark: "Everything looked perfect."
Staging as a hard worker
Also because Benko managed to convince his high-profile investors such as Klaus Michael Kühne, who is considered the richest German with a private fortune of around 40 billion euros, Fressnapf founder Torsten Toeller or Robert Peugeot of the Signa figures, which only shone on his papers, often in one-on-one meetings until shortly before the downfall. "The men keep quiet because they know each other. Logistics billionaire Kühne, for example, let the fact that car dynast Peugeot had invested shortly before his Benko entry put his mind at rest. When Toeller, exasperated, wanted to get out, Kühne's investment kept him there," the magazine "Spiegel" reports. Benko presented himself to his investors "as a hard worker, sitting at his desk from four or five in the morning, sending e-mails and text messages late into the night, often at weekends, on vacation."
According to Krone research, Benko also had "a private deal with almost every investor", according to a long-standing insider: "Everyone thought he had a better deal than the person next to him." And so they only formed when the downfall was inevitable.
No crisis manager
What was the reason for Benko's failure - apart from an obvious addiction to big business? According to "Spiegel", one investor states that the number cruncher was not used to "managing crises" - he reacted "emotionally to the point of illogicality" when he needed a cool head. Benko's condition had already seemed "bad" to the financier months before the big crash, he had seemed "desperate, alone". And in the end, "everyone else was to blame".
At the beginning of the noughties, the mid-twenty-year-old had appeared quite differently in Vienna. In a borrowed red Ferrari and wearing a Versace suit, he put on a big show in front of two real estate investors in the Millennium Tower, the tallest building in the city at the time (202 meters), built by entrepreneur Georg Stumpf, writes the magazine. Benko is said to have said: "Greetings. How much is the tower? I'll buy it."
Billion-euro offer from Stumpf
Twenty years later, Benko has apparently been presented with the bill for his arrogance. According to information from Krone, the group of companies owned by successful tower builder Georg Stumpf recently made an offer for the Signa Prime package (Goldenes Quartier, Park Hyatt, Constitutional Court, Kaufhaus Tyrol) that had been put on the market. The order of magnitude: one billion euros. According to reports, the insolvency administrator has yet to respond.
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