Luxury department stores: KaDeWe gets new boss – economy

The insolvent KaDeWe Group around the Berlin luxury department store of the same name is to be brought back on track by a renovator. Josef Schultheis will take over as chairman of the management board and will now be Chief Restructuring Officer of the KaDeWe Group, the company announced on Tuesday. The previous boss Michael Peterseim is leaving the company.

At the end of January, Peterseim had declared that a realignment would represent “a great opportunity for the luxury department stores to set the company up for success for many years to come.” Schultheis now explained that he wanted to accelerate the restructuring of the KaDeWe Group and thereby “establish a long-term viable business model”. Schultheis has already managed a large number of restructuring projects, the company said.

The KaDeWe Group belongs to the Austrian investor’s crumbling Signa Group René Benko, which has largely slipped into bankruptcy. The KaDeWe Group, with around 1,700 employees, also includes the Alsterhaus in Hamburg and the Oberpollinger in Munich. The Thai Central Group, which holds 50.1 percent, also has a stake in the company. The department store properties in prime city center locations belong to Signa.

Part of Benkos in dissolution Signa is also the German department store giant Galeria, which also filed for bankruptcy. KaDeWe and Galeria complained that they had to transfer excessive rents to Signa. In the past, Schultheis had tried to restructure the Weltbild publishing and bookselling group. This had slipped into bankruptcy. Weltbild then ended up with the Düsseldorf-based Droege Group, which is also mentioned in media reports as a bidder for Galeria.