The management of Signa Holding GmbH said it made the filing on Wednesday in Vienna with the goal of managing its restructuring as a debtor-in-possession, according to an emailed statement from the company. “Despite considerable efforts in recent weeks, the necessary liquidity for an out-of-court restructuring could not be sufficiently secured,” the company said.

Signa Holding is the centerpiece of a portfolio that includes Selfridges department store in London, luxury malls in Vienna and an historic hotel in Venice. The company owns stakes in units, which hold the assets directly as part of a complex structure that hampered fund raising talks.

The company indicated it was seeking to maintain operations, but it’s unclear how subsidiaries — which include Signa Development and Signa Prime, the two largest — might be affected. A German unit of Signa Prime recently filed for insolvency at a Berlin court, following a similar move from an affiliated sports retailer.

“The aim is to continue business operations within the framework of self-administration,” Signa Holding said.

If the application is granted by the court, Signa Holding would maintain autonomy to dispose of assets and restructure its debt. It would have to present a turnaround plan that’s accepted by a majority of creditors and enable it to pay at least 30% of claims within two years.

What set Benko apart from many other property investors is that the 46-year-old continued to make high-profile acquisitions even as challenges to his debt-laden structure started to surface in recent years. The end of the cheap-money era then triggered a drop in valuations and a cash crunch, and Signa’s obscure corporate structure left it especially vulnerable.

In frantic talks to secure financing to plug up to €600m of short-term liquidity needs, Signa reached out to a wide range of financiers including Mubadala Investment Co., Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Attestor Capital and Elliott Investment Management, people familiar with the discussions have said. Signa’s complexity and the tight time frame for a deal were too much to overcome.

The fallout from the insolvency is likely to be another blow for Europe’s battered commercial real estate sector by potentially forcing a fire sale of assets and resetting valuations even lower.

Financial contagion though could be limited. Signa’s largest exposure is toward banks for credit to fund acquisitions and construction work on development projects, such as Hamburg’s Elbtower. Those loans are often secured against the property, meaning banks may be well-positioned to recoup losses.

The rapid expansion of Benko’s empire has not come without regulatory scrutiny of the lenders that financed its rise. The European Central Bank asked several Signa creditors that worked with the company in Austria, Germany and other European countries to write down part of their exposure, Bloomberg News reported in August.

Signa secured funding mostly in German-speaking world The implosion will leave a wake of uncertainty, especially in Germany. Construction work had been halted at the Elbtower and other sites, and dozens of German cities face closures of Signa’s Galeria department stores, leaving a yawning gap in downtown shopping districts.

In Austria alone, 390 companies are affiliated with Signa Holding, the KSV1870 creditor representatitive said in a statement. Most of them are project companies, it said. Austrian law doesn’t recognize the insolvency of a whole group, only individual companies.

“From today’s standpoint, it’s impossible to predict whether further further companies of the Signa Group will file for insolvency, and whether it will lead to a domino-effect,” said Karl-Heinz Götze, the head of insolvencies at KSV1870.

Meanwhile, at Signa Development, bondholders have been assessing whether management acted against the interest of the company and breached financing terms after the unit revealed hundreds of millions of euros were owed to it by other Signa entities. Ringfencing measures should have protected bondholders from wider difficulties at Signa, Fitch Ratings said at the time.

Thailand’s Central Group could be a key player in cleaning up the fallout. The retail conglomerate has already secured control of Selfridges’ operating company by converting a loan into equity earlier this month. The company owned by the Chirathivat family is also a co-owner with Benko in Switzerland’s Globus chain and Berlin’s KaDeWe and has said it will support its European assets In Benko’s rise to one of Europe’s biggest property dealmakers, he gained the trust of Europe’s elite, counting Austrian construction tycoon Hans Peter Haselsteiner, German transportation magnate Klaus-Michael Kuehne and France’s Peugeot family among his investors. They now stand to lose heavily.

Despite contributing almost €1bn in fresh capital to the two largest Signa units just last year, Benko’s once-loyal backers balked at extending more money. A group pushed Signa’s founder to step aside and recruited restructuring experts Arndt Geiwitz and Ralf Schmitz to spearhead a turnaround. But it was too late to save a group that bet heavily on brick-and-mortar retail.

“Investments in this area did not yield the anticipated success,” Signa said in its statement.