Germany

A Signa Prime Selection AG creditor committee has rejected plans to sell a portfolio of Austrian property to the Schoeller Group, Bloomberg News reported. The initial decision casts doubt on a deal that insolvent Signa Prime had hoped would help address a bottleneck in its restructuring efforts. Negotiations between the firm and its lenders are ongoing. The luxury unit in the property and retail empire founded by Rene Benko was looking to sell several Austrian assets, including the Park Hyatt hotel and the Golden Quarter luxury shopping area.

German electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer Next.e.Go Mobile, which planned to build a factory in Bulgaria, has filed for insolvency amid industry challenges and capital market volatility, SeeNews.com reported. It is expected that other subsidiaries, including New York-listed Next.e.GO N.V., will initiate corresponding insolvency proceedings, German business news magazine Wirtschaftswoche reported last week. Next.e.Go Mobile intended to build three new micro-factories across Europe and the U.S., aiming to expand production of its small EVs for urban settings.

Deutsche Bank's chief executive officer said on Tuesday that he expects the current crisis in commercial real estate to continue in 2024 and that provisions for loan losses will be at the upper end of its projected range, Reuters reported. There won't be "overall big relief" to the challenges facing commercial real estate in 2024, CEO Christian Sewing said. Deutsche Bank is Germany's largest lender and also has the most in outstanding loans to the commercial real-state sector among its domestic competitors, data show.

A €200 million ($218 million) loan to Signa’s flagship property unit has become a roadblock in attempts to sell off its assets and fund a restructuring, according to insolvency administrators, Bloomberg News reported. The loan from the Schoeller Group, controlled by one of Germany’s industrialist families, is one of the last cash injections Signa Prime Selection managed to secure in July 2023, before its insolvency in December.

Rene Benko’s ailing property group Signa is close to selling a building in downtown Munich to German construction tycoon Alfons Doblinger, in what would be the first major asset sale since its main units filed for insolvency in December, Bloomberg News reported. Signa Prime and its insolvency administrator are in direct talks with the 80 year-old entrepreneur over the sale of Rosenstrasse 8 in Munich’s main shopping area. The building has been marketed for about €100 million ($109 million).

The European gravure printing market has been dealt a further blow after Germany’s Tiefdruck Schwann-Bagel (TSB) filed for insolvency just five months after being acquired by another continental group, Print Week reported. France headquartered Riccobono Group became Europe’s biggest gravure printer when it took over TSB last autumn. The deal involved reducing the number of gravure presses from six to four and a restructure that cut 78 jobs. Despite the downsizing, TSB filed an application to open insolvency proceedings with the district court in Mönchengladbach last week.

Deutsche Bank is preparing a liquidation lawsuit in Hong Kong against Chinese developer Shimao Group, two sources said, in a rare move by a foreign firm that comes amid rising credit defaults and China's deepening property sector crisis, Reuters reported. Shanghai-based Shimao is among the many Chinese developers that have defaulted on offshore bonds, after it missed the interest and principal payment for a $1 billion offshore bond in July, 2022.

The German branch of the cosmetics retailer Body Shop will not be closing any stores for the time being, despite the firm's bankruptcy, DPAInternational.com reported. "We are not thinking about closing any stores at the moment," the company's provisional insolvency administrator, Biner Bähr, told dpa on Friday. Business operations will continue as normal for the more than 400 employees in the 63 stores in the country, Bähr said. Body Shop filed for insolvency in Germany two weeks ago.

Germany’s ruling coalition is stitching together a package of measures likely worth around €7 billion ($7.6 billion) to try to lift Europe’s largest economy out of a prolonged slump, Bloomberg News reported. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government wants to have the package — which would reduce the tax burden on companies — ready in time to secure parliamentary approval before the summer break. Its overall value is likely to be in the region of €7 billion, one of the people said, though they stressed that the discussions are still at an early stage and the amount could change.