Dr. Jobst Kayser-Eichberg, former head of the Spaten-Löwenbräu Group. picture alliance / Peter Kneffel / Collage: Dominik Schmitt
He was celebrated as the “Beer Baron” and “Beer Billionaire of Munich”: Jobst Kayser-Eichberg became known in the 1990s as the head of the Spaten-Franziskaner brewery. However, the entrepreneur, who died in 2023, sold the beverage division of the Sedlmayr Group in the early 2000s and made his group one of the big players on the German real estate market.
But as Business Insider reported, business is no longer going well: the billion-dollar company had to make a value adjustment of 42 million euros for its Berlin portfolio. The reason could be a bad decision by Kayser-Eichberg: In 2016, he put his Berlin real estate business in the hands of a windy business partner: Till-Oliver Kalähne became managing director of the Sedlmayr subsidiary SPG Berlin. In this way, Kalähne became Kayser-Eichberg’s Berlin governor, so to speak.
As Business Insider exclusively reported, many of the projects Kalähne is responsible for have been progressing slowly or not at all for years. Where luxurious townhouses, apartments and hotels are to be built, all that has been seen for a long time is wasteland. Nevertheless, Kalähne made the company pay millions for construction work that was never carried out.
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How exactly the collaboration came about is not entirely clear. A former project employee says: “Kalähne had completely wrapped up Jobst with his sunny boy attitude.” Others even speak pointedly of a kind of “grandchild trick”. Kalähne is said to have repeatedly managed to get Kayser-Eichberg to spend more money on alleged construction costs – despite the damage to his company.