Manuel Pirolt

"Although dissatisfaction was slowly spreading among the shareholders, René Benko usually managed to impose his will on them. His specific mix of persuasion, flattery, and begging worked well in the individual divisions like Prime, but also in the holding company, where important shareholders such as Ernst Tanner, Hans Peter Haselsteiner, or Torsten Toeller were invested. This had the advantage for them that their interests were identical to those of René Benko. Because he also held shares in the holding through his private foundation. However, there were at least two disadvantages that the holding investors accepted: Firstly, unlike Benko, they could not independently meddle in the other divisions. And secondly, the holding almost had no assets of its own, only shares in the individual divisions. When there was nothing left to take, the flow of money to the holding dried up. And only costs and debts remained. Therefore, a consolidated balance sheet would have been even more important for the holding shareholders, that is, an overview of the actual financial situation of the entire structure after deducting all intergroup mutual shareholdings, receivables and debts, deliveries and services. However, despite several attempts by shareholders, Benko had never provided this, so that only he and some managers, like the CFO Manuel Pirolt, had a really deep insight."

"The CFO of Signa, Manuel Pirolt, was largely to confirm this assessment in June 2024: "It is true that one or two potential investors failed because of the legal complexity, although they might have found Signa real estate exciting," Pirolt said in an interview with manager magazin. "The structure of Signa was of course designed to achieve the best possible return in normal operation and not for the quickest possible transparency in an emergency." The basis of Signa's success, the steep revaluations of properties and the barely transparent structures, thus ultimately led to its failure. When it mattered, the emperor was naked. And everyone could see it."