Torsten Toeller

"People are eating out of Benko's hand, and the billionaires are feeding him fresh money. His narrative of Signa as the real estate company, which, thanks to the entrepreneurial genius of its founder, is better than all the others, fits perfectly with his clientele. One of his early fans, the entrepreneur Torsten Toeller, recounts Benko's strengths today with which he could dazzle: "I overestimated the energy and strategic understanding of a young supposed exceptional entrepreneur for too long and didn't recognize the story behind the story that René Benko has always told so eloquently.""

"Torsten Toeller, founder and owner of the pet food chain "Fressnapf", had just sold his Trinkgut stores to the retail giant Edeka and was looking for profitable investments."

"Benko's gold rush in concrete has, in addition to macroeconomic reasons, very specific ones as well. A long-standing senior executive at Signa lists three arguments for investors: Benko paid up to 6 percent dividends each year, whereas real estate usually only yields 2 to 3 percent. The shares increased in value year after year. Moreover, Benko concluded secret deals with individual financiers like Roland Berger, Klaus-Michael Kühne, or Torsten Toeller. He gave them the option to exit and return their shares if they wanted to. This made the shares fungible, as if investing in stocks – very unusual in the real estate business, which is typically long-term and therefore requires long-term capital planning."

"Benko's gold rush in concrete has, in addition to macroeconomic reasons, very specific ones as well. A long-standing senior executive at Signa lists three arguments for investors: Benko paid up to 6 percent dividends each year, whereas real estate usually only yields 2 to 3 percent. The shares increased in value year after year. Moreover, Benko concluded secret deals with individual financiers like Roland Berger, Klaus-Michael Kühne, or Torsten Toeller. He gave them the option to exit and return their shares if they wanted to. This made the shares fungible, as if investing in stocks – very unusual in the real estate business, which is typically long-term and therefore requires long-term capital planning."

"The company founder proved once again to be a skilled opinion maker – behind the scenes, but also in front of them. Thus, Benko regularly claimed to journalists, often unchallenged, that Signa operated with a high equity ratio of almost 50 percent. That was not entirely wrong, but nevertheless anything but right. Because, like other real estate conglomerates, Signa included financing with hybrid capital - namely mezzanine such as profit participation certificates; both are counted as equity on the balance sheet but come from external creditors. Therefore, the 20 to 30 percent of the capital actually provided by the shareholders was all the more important. But even this genuine equity capital, as it turned out at the latest after the bankruptcy at the end of 2023, was not really safe. For Benko had granted numerous investors the right to return their shares and be paid out at the then current rate. Roland Berger, Torsten Toeller, but also Swiss Lindt & Sprüngli Chairman of the Board Ernst Tanner and German logistics entrepreneur Klaus-Michael Kühne all had written agreements that could compel either René Benko's private foundation or parts of Signa to buy back their shares. And they were probably by far not the only ones."

"Wiedeking was the first to suspect, perhaps even too soon, a Ponzi scheme. That is, Signa could only pay its high dividends because it kept raising fresh money from banks and private lenders. Above all, Wiedeking was annoyed that Benko did not present him with all the figures. And he threatened with a special audit, which he wanted to enforce as a supervisory board member, as he said in discussions with various media. "I suspected as a shareholder that the figures presented by Mr. Benko did not match the ongoing business," Wiedeking said in retrospect. "I confronted him with questions that he could not answer sufficiently for me. He could not or would not give me satisfactory answers. That is why we went our separate ways. In hindsight, given the evidence and allegations now against Signa, I must assume that my fears were all justified." For Wiedeking, the commitment and timely exit paid off. He managed to more than double his investment within a few years. He chose reason over greed because he did not trust Benko's promises of an even rosier future. However, the ruler of the Signa conglomerate managed to prevent a mass exodus among his investors. Neither the founder of "Fressnapf" Torsten Toeller nor Niki Lauda, whom Wiedeking also tried to persuade to leave, followed the manager."

"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."

"Torsten Toeller has traveled there, as well as other shareholders such as the Swiss coffee machine millionaire Arthur Eugster and Ernst Tanner, Chairman of the Board of Lindt & Sprüngli, who either attend themselves or are represented by family members, and the Arduini Clan, a Brazilian-Italian entrepreneur family that has mainly made their wealth with cement. The Austrian construction entrepreneur Hans Peter Haselsteiner (Strabag), who holds 10 percent of the holding, has sent his apologies. The shareholders want to know if René Benko and his Signa will survive the real estate crisis that is currently rolling towards Europe."

"Most of the shareholders did not have Benko's private foundation as a contracting partner, but the holding company. Roland Berger, who had invested in low percentages in the Signa companies Prime, Development, and Retail, managed to partially exit. Apparently, he pressed for payment from Benko early on and exchanged about half of his Prime shares for money. Berger benefited from the high market value of the shares, which had multiplied since his entry. However, at the end of the day, Berger will likely exit his Signa investment with a small double-digit million loss, Torsten Toeller will lose a triple-digit million amount, and in the fiscal year 2023, he will write off a book value of 196 million euros, which can be read in the annual financial statement of "Fressnapf" Luxembourg."

"However, many things were quite different from what is known from the stock market, where all shareholders are treated equally. Benko is said to have told each Signa investor their own tailored story. Many had an individual special deal. Some, like the RAG Foundation or Kühne, received dividends for 2022 if they made a fuss – something the other shareholders were not allowed to know. Some, like Roland Berger or temporarily Torsten Toeller, were allowed to attend the supervisory board of Prime as guests if they insisted. Others were not. Numerous investors were given put options, which allowed them to exit within certain periods. Others were not."