Galeria: restaurants and food halls also insolvent – 1,600 jobs affected
After the department store group's fourth insolvency filing, two subsidiaries have followed. Insolvency pay has been requested for 12,000 staff in 83 stores.
Archive image · Photo: Edison McCullen / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Two more companies in the German department store group Galeria have filed for insolvency at the Düsseldorf district court: the operators of the Galeria restaurants and of the "Galeria Markthalle" food markets. According to FashionUnited, around 1,600 employees in 39 restaurants and 21 markets are affected. Preliminary administration was ordered on 6 October, again under Düsseldorf lawyer Frank Kebekus, who also oversees the parent company.
Galeria itself filed for insolvency on 2 October, its fourth filing within six years. According to dpa, Kebekus has applied for state insolvency pay for the roughly 12,000 employees in 83 stores, to be pre-financed through a bank. Salaries reportedly total almost 25 million euros a month. It is unclear when the Federal Employment Agency will decide.
Which stores will close remains open. A list of 33 locations under review predates the insolvency; in the worst case, reports say almost every second store could be affected. This has not been confirmed. Silke Zimmer of the Verdi union's federal board spoke of "hair-raising management mistakes", Cash. reports. The union said: "It must not be the case that employees have to pay for the mistakes of the executive floors."