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Ulrich Wolf and Moritz Schloms
Dresden. Christmas business is going well and, as usual at this time of year, Dresden's shopping streets are packed. Dresdeners are looking for the right presents. Most of them don't really care who owns the centers where they store. Even many of the store owners hardly ever have anything to do with the owners; large shopping malls are often managed by intermediary center managers.
The example of the Schillergalerie shows why it can be exciting and important to know the actual owner. The owner terminated the rental agreement with the Cinemaxx cinema chain, and store owners and customers have been wondering for months: What will happen next? The management company doesn't seem to know either - and the owner? Hard to find.
Schiller Gallery: All traces lead to Qatar
The search for the owner leads through a thicket of letterbox companies and companies based in countries with low corporate taxes. According to the administration, Bader Amar SAS in Paris is listed as the owner in the city's land register. The real estate management responsible for the Schillergalerie, among others, is keeping quiet about who owns it.
The company in question is Estama Gesellschaft für Real Estate Management GmbH. Its registered office is in Berlin, and according to the list of shareholders in the commercial register, the majority of the company is owned by a 68-year-old businessman from the south of England. The Estama representative in Dresden merely refers to the French company Bader Amar. The city of Dresden also says: "We don't actually have a direct contact person at the owner, only the address in Paris."
This address is Avenue Hoche 8 in Paris, just over a kilometer from the Arc de Triomphe. A prestigious town house from the Wilhelminian era with small wrought-iron balconies in front of the windows. The company has no employees and no website.
The president of the company is a Pakistani with British citizenship who lives in Qatar. Bader Amar's business is the "acquisition and/or leasing of land, buildings, real estate and real estate rights".
The majority owner of Bader Amar is therefore an investment company based in Luxembourg: Aquarelle Germany S.A., which was founded in 2011. 50-year-old Simar Jamak Khan is the linchpin of this company, which also operates without employees. He also lives in Qatar and has registered 26 companies at the well-known address in Paris alone.
However, the director of the Luxembourg company is an Italian, a lawyer, who works in an office on the tax haven island of Jersey in the English Channel. The search for clues ends there. Trade and company registers are not accessible there.
Kaufpark Nickern and Elbepark: In the hands of the Krieger family
They are really built for the mass clientele near the A17 and A4: the recently built Kaufpark Nickern and the Elbepark. CMC Center Management GmbH - with its rather unusual homepage, by the way www.kuddeldaddeldu.de - has the say here. It is named after the childcare areas in the shopping centers. Until a year ago, the company CMC was owned by Berlin billionaire Kurt Krieger.
The now 76-year-old then transferred his shares to his 43-year-old daughter Stephanie. Krieger opened his first store in Berlin-Wedding in 1967 by purchasing the Höffner furniture store. Today, in addition to Möbel-Höffner, Möbel-Kraft, Skonto and Möbel-Krieger also belong to his group of companies, whose turnover is estimated at more than two billion euros.
Krieger's assets amounted to according to Manager-Magazin last year to 1.4 billion euros; that is 174th place among the richest Germans.
Altmarktgalerie: A property of the Hamburg-based Otto Group
Dresden's most famous shopping mall is owned by a company called ECE Marketplaces GmbH & Co. KG. This in turn is a subsidiary of Hamburg-based Euroshop AG, which invests exclusively in shopping centers. There are currently 21 of them: 17 in Germany and one each in Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Hungary.
The largest shareholder of this company is an investment company, where the search for the ownership structure ultimately ends with the Hamburg merchant and billionaire Otto family and the US investment company Oaktree Capital, based in Los Angeles.
Centrum-Galerie: French and Americans get involved
The search for the owners of the Centrum-Galerie shopping center in the Prager Strasse pedestrian zone first leads to Duisburg. Klépierre Management Deutschland GmbH is based there. The parent company is the listed real estate company Kléppiere, based in Paris.
The French company manages 70 shopping centers in ten European countries, including four in Germany. In the first nine months of this year, the group generated a good 1.2 billion euros, of which 784 million euros remained in profit. And who owns Kléppiere?
These are primarily internationally active investment companies of banks such as the Norwegian central bank. The largest Klépierre shareholder is the US real estate company Simon Property from Indianapolis, the largest operator of shopping malls in the USA.
QF Passage: Via France to Canada and China
The elegant QF-Passage on Neumarkt is part of the portfolio of R&M Immobilienmanagement GmbH. Since September 2021, this company has been part of the Reanovo Group in Essen, which manages around 130,000 apartments and commercial units in Germany alone. But that is not the end of the story. Reanovo is majority-owned by the real estate company Emeria Europe from Antony near Paris. Its main investors come from Switzerland, Canada and China.
Seidnitz-Center: When it comes to money - Sparkasse
A good eleven years ago, the Seidnitz-Center went bankrupt. An insolvency administrator was in charge for four years before selling it to Swiss-based Partners Group Holding AG and London-based Arax Properties Ltd. in 2017. The investment companies held the center for two years before selling it again.
Since then, the new owner has been Deka, the real estate company of the German savings banks. The Seidnitz-Center has been slumbering in the fund of its sub-company Westinvest ever since. Another Dresden property included in the fund is the World Trade Center. Westinvest manages a total of 55 properties, 47 of which are in Germany.
