According to the insolvency administrator Arndt Geiwitz, the final demise of the Schlecker drugstore chain could have been avoided – with a new concept and a radical cut in the number of branches in Germany. But ultimately the buyer was missing, said Geiwitz on Monday before the Stuttgart district court in the bankruptcy trial against Anton Schlecker. There were several interested parties, such as an Arab sovereign wealth fund or an Eastern European fund. A kind of gas station concept was planned: fewer drugstores, but also groceries, a parcel shop and the like. "7-Eleven was our benchmark," explained Geiwitz, referring to the Japanese retail chain. "At the end of the day we also had a buyer for this concept."

Schlecker filed for bankruptcy in early 2012, after which Geiwitz tried to sell the chain for several weeks.

But after six weeks he was pretty sobered up.

The insolvency administrator gave a deeper insight into the background to the bankruptcy of Europe's largest drugstore chain.

There was a business model crisis.

The mostly small branches with less than 200 square meters of sales area would not have withstood the increasing competition from the competitors Rossmann and dm.

"Anton Schlecker's biggest mistake was sticking to the store size for too long." In the last four years before filing for bankruptcy, the company had made operating profit losses of 478 million euros.

Over 300 million euros claimed

"Anton Schlecker's philosophy has always been to achieve price advantages through extreme economies of scale," the witness continued. This perspective was certainly too purchase-oriented and not customer-oriented enough. Schlecker lost many customers, above all to its direct competitors, who – as Geiwitz explained – specifically attacked the profitable Schlecker locations with their own branches in the immediate vicinity. The 72-year-old did not believe in bankruptcy until the end. At the same time, he had significantly higher personnel costs than his competitors. According to the insolvency administrator, there was a certain over-regulation at the former drugstore chain. According to the information, there were 1,000 works councils and around 100 committees at the time.Schlecker had hired a management consultancy long before filing for bankruptcy in order to work out a restructuring concept. However, there was no longer enough money for the program called "Fit for Future" to implement it consistently.

The prosecution accuses Anton Schlecker of intentional bankruptcy. He is also said to have withdrawn money from the company and passed it on to his children Lars and Meike, who are accused of aiding and abetting. The public prosecutor is of the opinion that insolvency was imminent by the end of 2009 at the latest and that the founder was aware of the situation. Schlecker had always rejected this. He followed the administrator's lecture, which lasted several hours, without any visible emotion. Overall, the Schlecker creditors once registered 1.2 billion euros in claims.

Geiwitz appears entitled to only 438 million euros. Many former employees are also among the creditors. Whether he can pay off their claims also depends on the success of several claims for damages against previous suppliers because of a price cartel. More than 300 million euros are being claimed from them, as the witness reported on the 16th day of the hearing. Should he be legally successful in these cases, former employees could also count on money. The 48-year-old auditor spoke of "very unusual large-scale insolvency proceedings" - if only because Schlecker had run his empire as a sole trader with 24,000 employees at the time. It was very economical and lean. There wasn't even an automated merchandise management system.While Geiwitz finally closed all the shops in Germany, he was able to successfully sell some foreign companies, such as subsidiaries in Spain, the Czech Republic and Austria.