Wirecard – The “German Enron”, and a personal history

Post by nabla9 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:07 PM UTC

tnolet wrote: post #44

nabla9 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another: * They tie big names into the firm to get credibility. Hire them into the board, or pay them good money for short term consulting gigs. Examples: 1) Gen. James Mattis was in Theranos board. So was Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. 2) Enron paid Paul Krugman $50,000 to attend at least two times in advisory board meetings, nothing related to Enron business. What Enron really bought was the ability to say Paul…

The book on Theranos (Bad Blood) actually makes the argument that no “real” big names were in Theranos: Kissinger, Mattis and Schultz knew nothing about health care or medicin. They are/were career politicians. The book argues investors with actual experience in the industry staid far away.

Post by sveme » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

allendoerfer wrote: post #39

erfgh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're inferring way too much from a couple of failed investments.

Wirecard was the biggest bank of the 4th biggest economy. So I inferred some systemic issues here.

Post by deleuze » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:37 PM UTC

allendoerfer wrote: post #26

I personally know people, who invested considerable amounts of money into Wirecard after the COVID-19 crash and even one, who invested last week on the day the stock took its first dip. At the first point in time the shortselling, the FT articles and the ongoing BAFIN investigation were known. At the second point in time it was known, that they hired there buddies from KPMG, who could not find anything wrong, but eve…

Post by hef19898 » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 2:41 PM UTC

onli wrote: post #23

pjc50 wrote: post #12

Is there a good summary of Wirecard for those of us who haven't been paying attention? Was it an inherently fraudulent business, or a regular payment processor whose managers were skimming, or what?

Unknown. The company now claims they got defrauded themselves, but like the OP says, that's weak sauce. It looks like the company was completely fradulent forever. Interesting and more clear cut is the role of the German financial authorities, as they protected that companies for all those years they either are either completely incompetent or completely corrupt.

Post by justinclift » Mon, Jun 22, 2020, 3:04 PM UTC

blibble wrote: post #11

chewz wrote: post #2

> Lessons to be learned * even a pretty obvious fraud can go on much longer than one would think if the organizers are ruthless enough. My original short position would have gone against me 25x over 12 years and the share price even after today’s disaster would be higher than back in 2008 (just to be clear: the company is worth ZERO in my opinion) * a company that goes against people who write negative articles as ag…

amusingly: back in 2019, when journalists pointed out irregularaties in the company's accounts, the German Financial regulator's reaction was to ban short selling of their shares... and then issue legal proceedings against the journalists > On Monday, BaFin banned further short selling of shares in Wirecard, the Dax-listed payments services group. The stock has dropped steeply after FT reports raised questions over t…