Revealed: The Signa Debacle – Debt, Creditors, and Risk Management Exposed

2024-01-16 10:10:00

New revelations show that not only Julius Baer and the Aargauische Kantonalbank financed the corporate empire of the Austrian investor René Benko. There is an additional message hidden in the list of institutes involved.

Going along, hanging along: In the Signa debacle, this applies not only to the private bank Julius Baer, ​​which had supported the conglomerate, which was now threatened with bankruptcy, with 606 million francs and had already had to make 70 million francs in provisions.

Because like the Austrian portal «oe24″ revealed, there are various other local institutions among the creditors of the Signa companies René Benko.

A total of 14 billion euros in debt

According to the report, the Austrian investor’s conglomerate has a total of 14 billion euros open to lenders, most notably the Austrian banking group Raiffeisen International with around 755.5 million euros or the German insurance groups Munich Re with 700 million euros or Signal Iduna with 912 .5 million euros.

The list should be viewed with caution, as the commitment of 73 million francs that the Aargauische Kantonalbank (AKB) confessed to last week is missing. The sources are also unclear. On the other hand, the values ​​correspond to previously known information.

Migros Bank and Graubündner Kantonalbank are also exposed

Julius Baer leads the ranking of the largest Signa creditors among Swiss banks. This is followed by Migros Bank with around 101.4 million euros (the Migros Group had sold the Globus department store chain to Signa and the Thai Central Group), the Graubündner Kantonalbank with 60.8 million euros, and the Zurich private bank IHAG with 30 million Euro, the Walliser Kantonalbank with 25.3 million euros, the Obwaldner Kantonalbank with the same amount, and the Zürcher Kantonalbank (ZKB) with around 11.1 million euros.

As the AKB explained last week, it had granted part of its Signa loans as part of a syndicated loan – other Swiss financial institutions were probably also involved, whose names have now been mentioned.

Risk management in focus

But not all credit is the same. Julius Baer’s commitment is excessive for a medium-sized and conservative private bank, even compared to the loans from major banks such as ZKB, the British HSBC (33.5 million euros) or the Italian Unicredit (600 million euros).

If it were true that Julius Baer, ​​as rumored, had their loan partially secured with Signa Holding’s shares, which are now of little value, the questions about the risk management of the traditional Zurich company would become all the more urgent.

What does cantonal politics say?

But the loans from small state institutions such as the Valais and Obwalden cantonal banks, for which the owner canton is fully liable, are also revealing: They show that such institutions, despite clearly defined service mandates in their home area, consider it opportune to finance foreign companies to participate on a larger scale.

In the case of the AKB, this has already caused a stir in cantonal politics – the cantons in Obwalden, Graubünden, Valais and Zurich could soon knock on “their” institutes.

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