Philipp Triebel and Malte Horeyseck founded SellerX – but left in June 2024. Now the former unicorn is to be auctioned. picture alliance / imageBROKER | Schoening/ SellerX
The Hotel Bristol on Berlin’s Ku’damm was once a luxury hotel. A noble Kempinski hotel, Harald Juhnke and Hildegard Knef were regular guests. In 2009, however, it lost its status as one of the “Leading Hotels of the World” due to quality issues – despite extensive renovation. A strangely fitting place for what will happen there on September 17th.
A unicorn is being sold off at a public auction. Specifically, the shares of SellerX Germany GmbH and SellerX Nullum GmbH are being auctioned off at a public auction in the same Berlin Hotel Bristol. Really with “first, second, third”. In a “process letter” that the law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer sends out on request and explains the auction process to prospective buyers and informs them about the conditions of participation, it says: “The highest bid is called out three times by the notary, with a request for further bids. (…) If no higher bid is made after the third call, the notary will award the contract to the bidder with the highest bid.” The minimum bid, the letter also states, is 100,000 euros. Bidding is in 100,000 euro increments or, at the discretion of the notary Karin Arnold, who is leading the auction, in 50,000 euro increments.
However, the question arises as to who would actually want to take action in this case. First and foremost, there is a lot of debt up for auction.
Debts, collateral, attachment
In 2021, the world’s largest investment company Blackrock granted the Berlin-based Amazon aggregator SellerX a loan of $400 million (€359 million). When SellerX took over its US rival Elevate Brands in 2023, as Gründerszene also reported, the credit lines managed by Blackrock and Victory Park Capital were increased again, so that there is now talk of a $500 million loan.
