Inno sale “imminent”, says Galeria

(Update) German retail group Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof is preparing to sell its Belgian subsidiary Inno: the latter may come up for sale this week.

German government intervention

The ailing department store group is making the final preparations to start selling its Belgian subsidiary by the end of this week, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. Reports that Galeria wanted to get rid of Inno, date back from earlier this year.

Galeria underwent a major reorganisation using insolvency proceedings this year and has many creditors. The sale of Inno, which is back on track after earlier problems, is therefore a logical choice: the sale should yield 50 to 100 million euros. A major stakeholder in the sale is the German state fund WSF, which gave Galeria 680 million euros in two tranches of state aid.

“Ready for independent course”

In a press release Wednesday, Inno confirmed the news. Concrete negotiations on the sale have not yet started. This means that for now everything remains unchanged for the employees, partners and customers of the 16 department stores and inno.be. “Inno is healthy and ready to take an independent course,” says CEO Armin Devender. “Our strategic repositioning in recent years has achieved its goal. In fiscal year 2021-2022, Inno realised a positive EBITDA of more than 10 million euros, and we are also heading for an excellent result for the fiscal year just ended.”