A consortium including Hudson's Bay Company CEO Richard Baker's investment firm NRDC Corp is set to take over German department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters today.
Galeria, Germany's most prominent retailer, earlier this year filed for insolvency following the collapse of its parent Signa, the Austria-based property empire that has become the biggest casualty so far in Europe's real-estate crisis.
Baker's Hudson's Bay Company had owned Galeria Kaufhof for several years before a sale to Signa and the chain's merger with Karstadt.
An announcement of the deal could come as soon as tomorrow, the people said.
NRDC and German businessman Bernd Beetz, former head of cosmetics company Coty and a former supervisory board chairman at Galeria, will lead the consortium, the people said.
A spokesperson for Galeria's insolvency administrator Stefan Denkhaus declined to comment. Last month, Denkhaus had said he was in talks with two bidders.
Galeria's latest insolvency filing is its third in recent years. The pandemic pushed it to file in 2020, and soaring inflation and energy costs in the wake of the Ukraine war hit it again in 2022.
This time, Galeria's troubles stemmed from the collapse of its owner Signa, which had committed to providing Galeria with €200m, a payment that became unlikely in light of its troubles.
Signa is a shareholder in the parent group of Brown Thomas Arnotts alongside Central Group.
Germany's Handelsblatt business daily first reported that NRDC would win the bid.
