What: Odesa's Central Department Store failed to sell at a bankruptcy auction, with the property's technical passport also revealing that several structures listed in the original title documents no longer physically exist.

Why it is important: Coming amid a broader European retail distress cycle that already cites the war as a contributing pressure, the case shows how war-linked risk can attach to a specific insolvent owner rather than to Ukrainian retail as a whole — TSUM Kyiv's wartime growth is the counterpoint.

An auction for the TSUM building on Italiiska Street in Odesa, part of the bankruptcy proceedings of Ukrbudspetstech LLC, was cancelled on August 20 after no bidders came forward. The starting price was 399.4 million hryvnias for an entire property complex covering 12,400 square meters, with bids due by August 19.

According to the title documents, the complex includes the department store building itself along with a control room, a training workshop, a warehouse, canopies, and electrical workshops. However, the property's technical passport shows that in practice only the main TSUM building remains: the control room, training workshop, warehouse, electrical workshops, and one of the sheds listed in the title no longer exist. In their place are a different canopy, a walkway, and a tank, though the lot's total registered area is unchanged. The building currently operates as a shopping center with retail and warehouse space.

Ukrbudspetstech LLC belongs to the business group of former People's Deputy Leonid Klimov. Ownership traces to Black Sea Realty Group LLC, renamed Ukrbudspetstech in 2016, registered in Odesa with real estate leasing as its core activity. Klimov is also the former owner of Imexbank JSC, declared insolvent in January 2015; in January 2021, the Odesa Court of Appeals ordered him to pay 309 million hryvnias to Ukraine's central bank over an unpaid stabilization loan tied to that bank's collapse.

IADS Notes: The failed Odesa auction sits within a broader pattern of department-store real estate being forced onto the market through insolvency, with mixed and often protracted outcomes. In Croatia, SeeNews (April 2025) reported that Nama's bankrupt Zagreb department store entered a structured court auction with tiered pricing rounds and mandatory two-year employee retention — a sale process that took years to conclude, and Croatia Week (January 2026) later confirmed the building was only sold in 2025, after 25 years of bankruptcy proceedings, before the store itself closed for good. That drawn-out trajectory illustrates how distressed department-store assets can remain unresolved far longer than a single failed auction suggests, which is relevant to how the Odesa TSUM case may now unfold. More broadly, BoF (June 2025) placed European retail at its highest distress level since 2009, explicitly naming the war in Ukraine among the geopolitical pressures weighing on the sector. Yet outcomes for Ukrainian department stores diverge sharply by location and ownership: Delo (April 2025) reported that TSUM Kyiv added 52,000 new customers in 2024 and posted double-digit growth despite wartime conditions, underscoring that the Odesa TSUM's fate — tied to a specific owner's insolvency rather than the war itself — is not representative of the TSUM brand's performance across the country.

No one was willing to buy Odesa's Central Department Store for 400 million