Berlin| The Upper West high-rise overlooking Berlin’s bustling Kurfurstendamm shopping boulevard is one of many glittering trophies in the portfolio of Rene Benko’s collapsing Signa, but its robust valuation reflects how much pain is in store in the clean-up of the real estate empire.
Despite turmoil triggered by the end of the cheap-money era, the 35-storey tower was still valued at more than €700 million ($760 million) at the end of last year, according to a report prepared by broker Jones Lang LaSalle in April and seen by Bloomberg News. That’s a whopping 45 times the building’s rent, when multiples in the 20s are now more typical.
