The amount of the dowry, which was unclear for years, is evident from research by RTL Z in, among other things, the annual accounts of Mirage Holding and Mirage Retail Group, the former Blokker Holding.
Blokker Holding sold
Blokker Holding was sold by the founding family to investor Michiel Witteveen in the spring of 2019. At the time, the group had been making large losses for years and was largely dismantled after 2017. Subsidiaries such as Leen Bakker, Intertoys and Xenos had been sold.
When Witteveen took over Blokker Holding, the retail chains Blokker and Big Bazar remained. In order to make these ailing chains healthy again and to maintain the employment of thousands of employees, Witteveen received a dowry from the Blokker family.
Dowry
At the time, De Telegraaf reported in anticipation of the sale that the buyer of Blokker Holding had paid an amount of 250 million euros would receive. At the eventual sale to Witteveen, the newspaper reported a dowry of 280 million euro.
Since then, reporting on Blokker has almost always assumed an amount of 250 million euros. But the company and the new owner never wanted to confirm this.
‘Too high’
At the time, a spokesperson called the amount ‘far too high’. Witteveen also did not provide any clarification about the amount of the dowry in recent months. “I don’t know how they arrive at that amount,” he told RTL Z in October. “I have never commented on it, that is the agreement with the Blokker family. So I will not do that now.”
Research by RTL Z now shows that the total dowry that the Blokker family gave to the company was more than twice as large. The generous donation was divided into three parts, totaling approximately 600 million euros.
Huge guilt
The first part of the dowry concerns a generous cancellation of debts. Just before Witteveen took over Blokker Holding, the company had a huge debt to the Blokker family.
That debt had arisen in the years before the takeover, because the family provided large loans to the heavily loss-making retail group. These were necessary to prevent the company from going under.
The annual accounts of Mirage Holding, the vehicle through which investor Michiel Witteveen took over Blokker Holding on April 24, 2019, show that the debt to the family just before that takeover amounted to a total of 424 million euros. The company paid the family 3 to 5 percent interest on those debts.
Debt forgiven
According to the report, the vast majority of the debt, namely 383 million euros, was converted into equity just before the takeover by Witteveen. This means that the debt was forgiven. Blokker Holding still owed the family the remainder of 41 million euros.
However, Mirage Holding’s annual accounts show that it did not stop at the generous waiver of loans. “In addition, a substantial financial injection has been made available for the implementation of the business plans for the period 2019-2021,” the report states. “This amount has been made available partly immediately and partly (…) in tranches.”
Additional capital injection
The Mirage Holding report does not state how large this additional capital injection was. But these amounts are visible in the cash flow statements of Mirage Retail Group (the new name of Blokker Holding).
In 2019, this involved a direct capital contribution of more than 151 million euros, followed a year later by various contributions totaling almost 68 million euros. So in total about 220 million euros.
If you add up the forgiven loans and the capital injections, the total dowry amounts to more than 600 million euros.
No longer seriously ill
Thanks to the generous donations from the Blokker family, Witteveen acquired a reasonably healthy concern with solid equity instead of a desperately ill company for the purchase price of 1 euro.
To make this concrete: at the end of the 2018 financial year, Blokker Holding (now Mirage Retail Group) still had a negative equity of 325 million euros. This made the group, as they say, convincingly ‘technically bankrupt’ at the time.
In addition, the retail empire suffered a net loss of 144 million euros in 2019. Without the help of the Blokker family, equity would have fallen further that year to negative 469 million euros.
Generous donations
But thanks to the cancellation of loans and the capital contribution by the Blokker family, there was a positive equity of 64 million euros at the end of the 2019 financial year. A year later, the equity amounted to 183 million euros positive, partly thanks to the family’s latest capital injections and a profit for that year.
However, the dowry ultimately did not have the intended effect: making the retail group structurally healthy.
Back to black seed
Last year, the company’s intended IPO was canceled and (ex-)subsidiaries Big Bazar and BCC went bankrupt. At the beginning of February, Mirage Retail Group announced that the company suffered a net loss of 83 million euros in 2022 and is now in the dark again.
In order to continue Mirage Retail Group, CEO Ynse Stapert and owner Michiel Witteveen are currently looking for fresh capital again.
No explanation
Stapert says that he and Witteveen do not want to provide any explanation about the amount of 600 million euros. “Just as we have not responded to questions about dowry in the past, we will not do so now.”
He attributes the fact that the retail group now needs fresh capital again despite the donations from the family to ‘the closure of our stores during the corona pandemic’ and the ‘sharply increased costs for rent, staff and energy’ after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
Stapert does not want to say much about the progress of the financing negotiations. “We are currently actively working on the refinancing. We will not make any substantive statements about this, but this process is proceeding in accordance with our expectations. We are confident of a successful outcome.”
The Blokker family remains silent
It is unknown what the Blokker family thinks of the disappointing developments at the retail group, and whether they are considering providing financial assistance to their former family business again. The heirs of Jaap and Ab Blokkker, who once made the shopping empire great, do not want to say anything or are unreachable.
A spokeswoman for Nieuw Geluk, the company of the ‘heirs Ab’, says she never responds to questions from the media. At Nardinc Beheer, the company of the ‘heirs Jaap’, no one answered the phone yesterday and this morning. A family confidante did not respond to a contact request.
Never boring at Mirage
Under Michiel Witteveen, a lot has happened at Mirage Retail Group in recent years.
The company started in 2019 with Blokker and bargain chain Big Bazar. Since then, the former subsidiary Intertoys was bought back after bankruptcy and BCC’s electronics stores were taken over. On the other hand, the group divested its subsidiaries Blokker Belgium and Big Bazar. Blokker Belgium, Big Bazar and BCC went bankrupt.
Mirage Retail Group currently houses the Blokker (400 stores, 3,700 employees) and Intertoys (200 stores, 1,300 employees) chains. According to the latest known data, Intertoys is profitable, but Blokker is still operating at a loss.
2024-03-07 10:11:59
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