Austrian investor Signa has sold a 49.9% share in the KaDeWe department store property at Berlin’s Tauentzienstrasse to a subsidiary of Thai group Central Group.
Financial details were not disclosed.
The deal is intended to deepen the two groups's close cooperation in European retail, which has existed for years. Central has a 50.1% stake in the KaDeWe Group, which operates the Berlin department store as well as the Oberpollinger in Munich and the Alsterhaus in Hamburg, and Signa owns the remaining 49.9%.
In 2020, Signa and Central also acquired the Swiss department store chain Globus and later took over Selfridges, De Bijenkorf and Brown Thomas Arnotts.
According to Signa, the sale of the shares in the KaDeWe building to Central is the 'logical consequence' of the business model. 'The essence of this partnership is, on the one hand, to run the operational business together and, on the other hand, to be joint owners of the main trophy properties and to develop them further,' the company said in a statement.
The two partners 'already jointly owned absolute trophy assets such as the famous Selfridges property on Oxford Street in London' and 'as property owners also shared properties in Dublin, Manchester, Zurich, Bern and Basel' as well as the two currently under construction future KaDeWe Group locations in Düsseldorf and Vienna.
Signa took possession of the Berlin department store in 2012 through the purchase of a €1.1 bn portfolio of 17 buildings used by Karstadt.
The assets were sold by Highstreet Holdings whose owners included Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank Real estate fund group RREEF.
