Raiffeisen, a lender with one of the largest exposures to Signa Group, has mandated Teneo and its German subsidiary Herter & Co. as financial advisors and Gleiss Lutz as legal advisor in relation to the debt it extended to the Austrian property conglomerate, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Teneo in late September announced that it was acquiring Herter & Co., a Germany-based independent debt advisory and financial restructuring firm.

Raiffeisen as a whole has lent approximately EUR 1bn in various financings to Signa Group, both sources said. Some EUR 750m sits on Raiffeisen Bank International’s books, according to media reports.

Raiffeisen’s exposure to Signa sits at several project asset (PropCo) levels as well as at the group and other levels, both sources said.

As various Signa entities either filed for insolvency or are on the brink of entering such proceedings, Raiffeisen would need help to map out potential solutions to each exposure. These could include determining whether it wants to enforce certain debt contracts, finding ways to stabilise the situation to facilitate a sale of the underlying asset down the line, or even simply running the ruler over valuations, one of the sources added.

Signa Holding on 29 November filed for insolvency proceedings in Vienna, two days after its unit Signa Real Estate Management Germany GmbH did the same in Germany and a little more than a month after Signa Sports United entered insolvency in Germany (on 26 October).

Subsequently, Signa Financial Services, Signa Retail Selection and SportScheck filed for insolvency on 30 November, while Signa REM Germany Rent and Signa Financial Services followed suit on 6 December, according to media reports.

More Signa entities are expected to enter insolvency proceedings in the near term. These include Signa Prime, which held assets like department stores KaDeWe in Berlin and Globus in Switzerland, as well as the unfinished Elbtower project in Hamburg, according to one of the sources.

Signa Development, which issued a EUR 300m 5.5% senior unsecured due 2026 bond, was respectively downgraded by rating agencies S&P and Fitch to CC and C, on its prospective insolvency application.

Other lenders with sizeable exposures to Signa Group include Julius Baer with around USD 690m, as well as German state-owned Landesbanks such as Helaba and BayernLB which lent hundreds of millions of euros to the group, according to an FT report.

There has been little inter-lender dialogue so far, the other source noted.

Signa’s various stakeholders have engaged financial and legal advisors in a bid to contain the fallout sparked by its challenging liquidity position as the group raced to raise about EUR 600m to plug a funding gap, as Debtwire reported in November.

Gleiss Lutz, Herter, Raiffeisen and Teneo declined to comment.