First mall to go bankrupt: Tiago Oradea up for auction

Tiago Oradea is the first mall in Romania to go bankrupt, with the court-appointed liquidator to put the project up for auction over the next two weeks. The starting price will be 35.5 million euros, half the investment made, which was paid for with a 65 million-euro loan granted by UniCredit Austria and UniCredit Tiriac.
Seen as "shopping temples," the malls are starting to show signs of failure, so that after two projects in Braila and Sibiu were closed for lack of tenants and customers, the first bankruptcy came, with Casa de Insolventa Transilvania (Transilvania Insolvency Firm) as legal liquidator having set the auction for the mall developed by Irish developer Mivan for the 3rd of June.
Developers tried to build more malls than the market can take for the time being, on plots of land outside cities and without taking into account competition across the street and the purchasing power of the people living in the area. With the onset of the crisis, retailers backed out and owners were left with hectares of unoccupied retail space, in which they had sunk tens of millions of euros.
"The mall was supposed to be completed at the beginning of last year but the developer delayed the inauguration and then went insolvent. At first, leases for about 15% of the total space had been signed, now we don't know anything more about it," said Andreea Anghelof, partner of Casa de Insolventa Transilvania.
UniCredit officials had not provided any comment by the time the story was ready for print.