Lars Windhorst’s Tennor Holding declared bankrupt

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly e-newsletter.Lars Windhorst’s Tennor Holding, which borrowed billions from traders and was as soon as on the coronary heart of the German financier’s enterprise empire, has been declared bankrupt on the request of Dutch tax authorities.An Amsterdam court docket on Tuesday appointed a liquidator for the Netherlands-based entity, based on public filings. Dutch tax authorities requested a court docket to wind up the corporate over an unpaid €5.3mn declare, based on an individual acquainted with the matter.Tennor was for greater than a decade Windhorst’s most important funding firm and the linchpin of a enterprise empire fuelled by heavy borrowing and complicated financing preparations involving illiquid shares and bonds. The Dutch holding firm borrowed billions of euros from traders together with France’s H2O Asset Administration, ploughing the proceeds into trophy belongings that included Hertha Berlin soccer membership and Italian lingerie maker La Perla.Tennor Holding has not printed accounts for years, nonetheless, and Dutch regulators suspended its former auditor for 2 years due to negligence in auditing its books. The corporate final reported about €3bn of debt and different liabilities in unaudited monetary statements for 2020.Tennor Group, an umbrella time period Windhorst makes use of to explain his general funding enterprise, advised the Monetary Instances that since 2022 it had “reorganised in a brand new and separate company construction” and that Tennor Holding had been “for the previous couple of years an inactive firm with no revenues and no staff”.Tennor Group added that it had “disputed” the declare from Dutch tax authorities, and that Windhorst and the group “stay dedicated to maintain paying down its debt”.Tennor Holding has confronted a number of claims lately from aggrieved collectors in courts in London and Amsterdam. Windhorst’s companies additionally suffered when its most important backer H2O, a star of French funding that at its peak managed €30bn in belongings, grew to become embroiled in a scandal in 2019 as a result of its investments linked to the financier.Windhorst first shot to fame whereas nonetheless a youngster within the Nineteen Nineties, when he was broadly hailed as a enterprise “wunderkind” and solid an in depth bond with then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. However within the following decade he endured a bruising downfall, encompassing company and private bankruptcies, that culminated in a suspended jail sentence in 2010.RecommendedIn current years, Windhorst has shifted to chopping new offers out of Swiss entity Tennor Worldwide, which has in at the very least one occasion purchased belongings out of insolvency from an organization beforehand owned by Tennor Holding.Tennor Worldwide has additionally been topic to lawsuits from collectors up to now 12 months, nonetheless.A proper insolvency course of at Tennor Holding may shed additional mild on the place cash raised from Windhorst’s traders was spent.In 2023, Windhorst was offered with proof below cross-examination in London’s Excessive Court docket that he had taken substantial loans from firms similar to Tennor Holding, whereas billing bills similar to personal jet prices and luxurious accommodations to his firms.Windhorst advised the court docket that “all these actions are associated to enterprise”, including that he labored “seven days every week” and that each one his leisure bills had been client-related.H2O final week misplaced an enchantment at France’s highest administration court docket in opposition to a file positive levied by the nation’s monetary regulator in 2022 in relation to its dealings with Windhorst. The funding agency, which was additionally reprimanded by the UK’s Monetary Conduct Authority final 12 months, faces a Paris court docket listening to subsequent week in a lawsuit from traders claiming damages as a result of investments linked to the financier.