Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof

"From the beginning, Benko saw HBC as a "fake company," whose collapse was only a matter of time, as he once told the authors of this book. This was before the bankruptcy of Signa and the return of Hudson’s Bay major shareholder Richard Baker as an investor in Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof in the then still distant year 2024."

"But the beautiful facade of the Galeria building is deceptive. Hardly anything of the former glamour is felt in the department store anymore, as Walter Droege had to experience. The senior boss of the consulting and investment firm in Düsseldorf, which bears his name, started as a consultant and now his company, co-owned with his son, turns over double-digit billion euro amounts annually. In the scene, he is known as the turnaround king. With his team, he has, for example, acquired the struggling online book retailer Weltbild. At the beginning of 2024, he then became interested in acquiring part of the Galeria stores. Signa Retail Selection AG, based in Switzerland, to which Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof also belongs, had announced that it would wind up the company. Galeria was thus up for sale."