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Lending billions from investors, Lars Windhorst’s tenor holding, once at the heart of the German business empire, has been declared bankrupt at the request of Dutch tax authorities.
The Amsterdam Court on Tuesday appointed liquidators for the Netherlands-based entity on Tuesday, according to the release. Dutch tax authorities have asked the company to close the company via an outstanding 5.3 million euro claim, according to anyone familiar with the matter.
Tennor has been Windhorst’s leading investment company for over a decade, a business empire lynchpin backed by heavy borrowing and complex financing arrangements, including illiquid stocks and bonds.
The Dutch holding company borrowed billions of euros from investors, including France’s H2O Asset Management, and plowed the proceeds into trophy assets, including the Hersa Berlin Football Club and Italian lingerie maker La Perla.
However, since Tennor Holding has not made its accounts public for many years, Dutch regulators have suspended previous auditors for two years due to negligence in auditing the book. The company last reported liabilities and other liabilities in its unaudited financial statements for 2020 of approximately 3 billion euros.
Tennor Group, the overarching term Windhorst uses to describe his entire investment business, told the Financial Times since 2022 “has been “reorganized with a new corporate structure,” while Tennor Holding said “for the past few years it has been an inactive company that has not had revenue and no employees.”
The Tennor Group added that it “disputed” a claim from Dutch tax authorities and that Windhorst and the group “continue to commit to continuing to pay off their debts.”
Tennor Holding has faced multiple claims from severe creditors in courts in London and Amsterdam in recent years. Windhorst’s company also suffered when Maine backer H2O, a French investment star who manages 30 billion euros in assets at its peak, got caught up in a scandal in 2019 due to investments related to financial operators.
Windhorst first rose to fame in the 1990s, even though he was still a teenager. He was widely welcomed as the “Wunderkind” of business and formed a close bond with the then German Prime Minister Helmutkohl. But in the next decade he endured the downfall of brutality, including the bankruptcy of businesses and individuals who fell into prison sentences suspended in 2010.
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In recent years, Windhorst has moved from Swiss entity Tennor International to cut new deals. This is at least one example, when you purchased assets from bankruptcy from a company previously owned by Tennor Holding.
However, Tennor International has been the subject of lawsuits from creditors over the past year.
Tennor Holding’s formal bankruptcy process could further reveal where the money raised from Windhorst investors was spent.
In 2023, Windhorst was presented with evidence that, based on cross-examination at the London High Court, he made substantial loans from companies such as Tennor Holding, while also charging costs such as private jet costs and luxury hotels.
Windhorst told the court that “all of these activities are business-related,” adding that he works “seven days a week” and that all his entertainment expenses are client-related.
H2O lost its appeal last week in France’s Supreme Administrative Court for a record fine imposed by the country’s financial regulator in 2022 in connection with its deal with Windhorst. The investment company, which was also rebuilt by the UK’s Financial Conduct last year, faces a court hearing in Paris next week in a lawsuit from investors claiming damages from investments related to investors.
