January 23 (Reuters) - The arrest of Rene Benko on Thursday marks a significant downfall for the Austrian property magnate following the collapse of his business empire, Signa Holding.
Benko, 47, who has previously denied any wrongdoing, amassed his fortune by establishing Signa from scratch, leveraging heavily during a period of historically low interest rates that came to an end in 2022.
Key events in the saga unfolded as follows:
In November 2023, Signa Holding filed for insolvency, causing a ripple effect throughout its large retail and real estate portfolio, which included assets like the Chrysler Building in New York and shares in Britain's Selfridges department store.
The debt burden at Signa, which held properties like the Alsterarkaden and the Alsterhaus in Hamburg, as well as the KaDeWe department store in Berlin and the Oberpollinger in Munich, alongside assets in Vienna's exclusive Golden Quarter shopping district, was estimated to be around $5.5 billion.
Subsidiaries of Signa faced insolvency as administrators strove to salvage what they could of creditors' investments in the following weeks and months.
In February 2024, the CEO of Julius Baer resigned after the Swiss bank wrote off 586 million Swiss francs ($646 million) tied to loans extended to Signa.
Throughout the course of 2024, Signa undertook various actions such as selling its stake in the Chrysler Building, disposing of its private jet, and restructuring its operations through divestitures and acquisitions by entities such as Central Group, Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, and the Schoeller Group.
In January 2025, Benko was arrested by Austrian authorities over suspicions of concealing assets from insolvency administrators and creditors.
Notable currency conversions: ($1 = 0.9176 euros) and ($1 = 0.9072 Swiss francs).