TV investors failed
“Löwen” group Social Chain is insolvent
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Social Chain was supposed to be a unicorn – a multi-billion dollar company. But now the listed trading group owned by investors Ralf Dümmel and Georg Kofler, known from the “Lion’s Den,” is bankrupt. However, the core of the company should continue to exist.
The joint company of entrepreneurs Ralf Dümmel and Georg Kofler, known from the Vox program “The Lions’ Den” (DHdL), The Social Chain AG, is bankrupt. The listed trading group announced in a mandatory announcement that it would file for insolvency. Kofler therefore resigned from his position as CEO.
Shares of Social Chain plunged to less than 50 cents. Less than two years ago, in autumn 2021, the company’s share price was over 58 euros. Social Chain was therefore worth around half a billion euros. The evaluation reflected the great ambitions of Dümmel and Kofler. At that time, Social Chain was created through Kofler’s takeover of the DS trading company run by Dümmel. The latter invested 220 million euros, equity and debt capital. At that time, the two companies had already been working together as jury members and investors in the start-up show “The Lions’ Den” for several years.
With Social Chain, the success of Dümmels DS, which is successful in the wholesale of promotional goods, was to be transferred to online retail and, above all, social commerce, sales via social networks. But this success has not been achieved to date. After a loss of a good 70 million euros in the first financial year of 2021, the company lost more than 100 million euros in 2022. Instead of becoming a unicorn, i.e. a company valued at more than one billion euros, as Kofler and Dümmel had hoped, the share price fell steeply. At the beginning of this year, the shares were only worth around five euros. Last week, the financial regulator Bafin reprimanded the company for incorrect bookings amounting to millions in the 2021 consolidated financial statements.
Most recently, Kofler had planned to raise new money with a capital increase in order to get Social Chain afloat again. However, the project failed, as can be seen from today’s mandatory announcement. An investor did not meet his payment obligations. The board therefore assumes “that there is no longer a sufficient probability that the company’s short-term financial needs can be covered.”
According to the announcement, Dümmel’s successful company DS is not affected by the bankruptcy. Their business operations are continuing, they say. According to a “Bild” report, Dümmel is trying to separate DS from the social chain and run it independently. It has not yet been decided whether and how other parts of the group will be retained, the company statement continues.
