The insolvency of investor René Benko’s Austrian Signa Holding is also affecting the traditional company Sport-Scheck, which actually seemed to have already been saved. The management of the sporting goods chain has filed an application with the Munich district court to open insolvency proceedings. “This step is necessary because Signa Holding cannot and will not fulfill its contractual payment commitment through the filed for insolvency,” says a statement from Sport-Scheck. The Signa bankruptcy means that you yourself are insolvent.
This is all the more remarkable because recently everything looked as if Sport-Scheck had escaped the ever-increasing chaos surrounding the Signa conglomerate, which included several thousand companies, last month. The 34 Sport-Scheck stores scattered throughout city centers as well as the online shop, which, according to the company, has a reach of 13 million visitors annually, had been part of the Signa sports division for three years, which was the first Benko division to collapse. But rescue seemed close and it came from the British island: in mid-October, the Frasers Group, based in the small town of Shirebrook in the central English county of Derbyshire, announced that it would take over Sport-Scheck.
It was said at the time that a corresponding “binding agreement” had been reached with Benkos Signa Retail Department Store Holding GmbH. Frasers Group’s stated goal is to become the largest sporting goods retailer in Europe, Africa and the Middle East through its subsidiary Sports Direct. The purchase of Sport-Scheck was intended to give the British a strong position in the German sporting goods market, the continent’s highest-selling market. The sporting goods industry, especially industry leaders Nike and Adidas, expressly supported the sale of Sport-Scheck to Frasers.
But the deal has fallen through for the time being and Sport-Scheck is once again facing an uncertain future. This Thursday, the management announced that they were planning to use the insolvency proceedings to “rehabilitate and strengthen the market positioning of Sport-Scheck as a leading premium sports retailer” in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Frasers is still sticking to the takeover plan, but “other potential investors” have now reportedly expressed interest in buying. Sport-Scheck is therefore “confident that we will find a new, strong partner who will ensure long-term stability for the company, something that Signa Holding has recently been unable to guarantee”. Whether such a new partner will be found and whether it will actually be called Frasers will not become clear until the first quarter of 2024 at the earliest.
Regardless of the application for insolvency proceedings, according to the company, all Sport-Scheck branches and the online shop will remain “open under normal conditions”. Founded in 1946 by Otto Scheck in Munich as a tailoring shop for winter equipment from old Wehrmacht stocks, Sport-Scheck has been part of Benko’s confusing corporate empire since 2020, after all sorts of economic turbulence. Most recently, the company generated sales of around 350 million euros.