A consortium led by the US private investment firm NRDC Equity Partners and German businessman Bernd Beetz plan to buy bankrupt German department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, dpa learned from sources close to the negotiations.
Representatives for Galeria's insolvency manager, Stefan Denkhaus, and the company itself both declined to comment on the deal, which was reported earlier by the Handelsblatt business daily.
Denkhaus is said to have recently held final negotiations on the sale of the chain with two bidders.
Handelsblatt reported Denkhaus informed creditors on Monday that NRDC and Beetz were to be awarded the contract and that the deal would be inked on Tuesday. Denkhaus plans to publicly present the buyer on Wednesday, with a creditor committee then likely giving its final approval for the takeover in May.
NRDC is owned by entrepreneur Richard Baker. The 58-year-old is seasoned investor in the retail sector and owns a majority stake in the Hudson Bay Company (HBC) and Saks Fifth Avenue.
Through HBC, he already owned Galeria Kaufhof between 2015 and 2019 before the fashion retail chain was sold to the Signa Group and merged with Karstadt to become Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof.
Beetz is the former chairman of cosmetics company Coty Inc and president of the third-division German football club SV Waldhof Mannheim.
Like other department store chains, Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof has struggled for years as commerce has increasingly moved online. The chain was most recently owned by Austrian real estate mogul René Benko's troubled Signa Holdings empire, which collapsed last year.
