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The KaDeWe in Berlin
Photo: Jürgen Held / IMAGO
The most famous department store in Germany, the Kaufhaus des Westens in Berlin, or KaDeWe for short, is bankrupt, according to consistent media reports. An application for insolvency was filed on Friday. This is reported by, among others, the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” and the business magazine “Capital”. The “Bild” newspaper also reported on Sunday that the employees at KaDeWe already knew about the bankruptcy filing.
Accordingly, the entire KaDeWe Group GmbH group of companies, which also includes the Alsterhaus in Hamburg and the Oberpollinger in Munich, is affected by the insolvency. The KaDeWe Group is 50.01 percent owned by the Thai Central Group and 49.99 percent part of the Signa Group of the Austrian real estate dealer René Benko, whose holding company filed for bankruptcy last year.
The application covers the operating company of the KaDeWe Group and thus the department store business and the employees; around 1,900 employees are affected. The real estate companies for the Alsterhaus and Oberpollinger properties filed for insolvency last week.
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