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Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

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Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#111

Post by muro »

com wrote: post #109
hef19898 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, he did admit that. Difficult not to. Bafin would look a lot better, IMHO, if in addition to investigate the FT and British short sellers, they also had a closer look at WC. They didn't.

The most terrible thing is that Bafin or their successor organisation will contain nearly all the current managerial cadre, but will have grown by 5 times in the coming 4 years. Nothing will change except for more chauffeur-driven BMWs. Never waste a good crisis.

What risk do they have in not doing their job? Approximately none.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#113

Post by mschuster91 »

hogFeast wrote: post #90
xchaotic wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As one person in Germany explained to me - there is no corruption at the low level - it is not worth it for the policeman to lose a nice salary and a pension for a few hundred euros bribe. So you will get a speeding ticket everytime and Germany is known for that sort of 'solidity'. On the higher end, however, the stakes and balances are different - high pay is frowned upon and owners of Aldi supermarkets etc are know…

It is also relevant that a good chunk of the ultra-rich in Germany came to prominence with govt assistance (that varies from slave labour to heavily subsidised loans). Aldi is a pretty poor example because they are an example of a company that actively disrupted German corporate life. So being understated is a north European characteristic but that isn't why German billionaires behave that way (they are often extreme…

Germany and weak unions? Lol, I get they're not as solid as French unions where bossnappings and violent riots are the norm not the exception, but still. We have legally protected unions and employee councils ("Betriebsrat"), the US and many other countries in the world do not have these at all.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#114

Post by gumby »

lazyjones wrote: post #97
gumby wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The German venture market (USD 6B) is about the size of a second tier market like Los Angeles. MoneyTree says that SV investment In Q1 of 2020 was about 2X Germany’s total for last year. Not to mention that what gets invested in is mostly food delivery, shops and not particularly technical businesses (which are a very large investment sector in the US but aren’t considered “startups”. What gets written up in, say, Gr…

> The German venture market (USD 6B) is about the size of a second tier market like Los Angeles. I don't know where that number comes from, but I'll assume it's the sum of investments and not the sum of capital available for investment since the latter is a bit hard to determine.

Deals done into {Germany,LA,SV,SF} from funds anywhere in world. That’s what I think is meant when someone says there is “almost venture capital” — is money available to invest there? These data are available from the usual sources online (Moneytree report, E&Y etc etc etc in English and German sources).

I don’t know of any German funds that make venture investments outside Europe though doubtless some exist. Still, if you want to back into the size of the domestic venture funds, pick a percentage (70%?) of the investments made as having come from domestic sources and figure that a fund wants to put all its committed capital to work within the first couple of years, and figure that the total venture pool is perhaps $7B. There are bigger single venture firms a few blocks from my house in Palo Alto. For example I walk past Accel every day to get a coffee.

As you say there just aren’t many companies there being funded, and when I read the local blogs and such people seem to want “the lifestyle” (or hate it) more than talking about building major businesses. To me it’s indistinguishable from people starting a sandwich shop.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#115

Post by realityking »

pheug wrote: post #70
patall wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My parents earn together ~90k, just bought a house and travel about 4 weeks a year through all of europe and still support us three kids. So thats not true, at least not if you are living in a smaller city. And for places like Berlin or Munich, 50k a year would be ridicoulously low. CEO in a start-up in Berlin told me a few month ago that they are hiring poeple with literally 2 to 3 coursera courses in machine learni…

You get 401k match and health insurance at any good employer in the US too. As well as much lower taxes. German taxes are just batshit crazy, second only to Belgium. How people can afford to FI/RE with these taxes and pay is beyond me. Oh wait they don't! One of the lowest median wealth per adult in western Europe!

I‘m not saying you‘re wrong, but the media wealth statistic are heavily distorted by two facts

1. our retirement systems is based on a generational contract, not capital 2. home ownership is very low

If you control for both the results would look very different. Now #2 obviously causes a huge issue in terms of generational wealth.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#116

Post by realityking »

pkaye wrote: post #102
justapassenger wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it baffles me that it had to come this far. There were warning signs all over it. It's not a Germany specific problem. Warning signs all over tons of companies. Most of silicon valley darlings are plastered with red flags all over. But financial regulators like SEC are unable/not willing to take an action against darlings of wall street.

Can you name some?

Theranos is an example from the recent past

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#117

Post by lazyjones »

gumby wrote: post #114
lazyjones wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The German venture market (USD 6B) is about the size of a second tier market like Los Angeles. I don't know where that number comes from, but I'll assume it's the sum of investments and not the sum of capital available for investment since the latter is a bit hard to determine.

Deals done into {Germany,LA,SV,SF} from funds anywhere in world. That’s what I think is meant when someone says there is “almost venture capital” — is money available to invest there? These data are available from the usual sources online (Moneytree report, E&Y etc etc etc in English and German sources). I don’t know of any German funds that make venture investments outside Europe though doubtless some exist. Still,…

> Deals done into {Germany,LA,SV,SF} from funds anywhere in world.

That's not the same as the available venture capital. If there are no good investments to be made, the potential venture capital simply isn't (all) invested. So the point that lack of VC is a problem is wrong, it's the attractive startups that are missing. It's the same in Austria - I invested in 2 startups, got a little burned and have since not invested for lack of good opportunities. I've also been asked a few times by a larger German company for my opinion on potential investments, so I know they're looking and can't find anything worthwhile. Funding is not the problem! And the "market size" is only indicative of the (too few) good startups, not of the potentially available capital.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#118

Post by NotSammyHagar »

mjd wrote: post #69
matsche wrote: post #2

it baffles me that it had to come this far. There were warning signs all over it. The German BaFin messed up so badly that one must either fundamentally doubt theircompetence or question their integrity.

Matt Levine, who writes the “Money Stuff" column for Bloomberg News, described it like this: > When a company is going around accusing reporters of conspiring with short sellers to bring it down, that is an almost infallible sign that it is going down. Companies that are not doing fraud, when reporters ask if they have faked their revenue, respond by explaining where their revenue comes from. Companies that are doing…

It's interesting to think of this from the tesla standpoint. There was a kind of reverse situation where the shorters and idealogically opposed to evs or pro gas people had conspiracy theories going the other way. They were doing secret investigations and harassing some reporters who thought telsa was some big financial fake-out.

There were claims that tesla wasn't really selling cars (cause who would want one?), or they were all parked in some giant hidden parking lot, rusting away or something. They hired airplanes to take pictures of the factory. This somehow got some famous investors into it who were sure tesla was doomed. There was a whole belief system, weird twitter handles. There seemed to be coordinated publishing of information to try to sink the stock. I've never been close enough to a stock to see it happen before this.

And now it has turned around again - instead of too many shorters, their value is too high. Tesla's market value feels vastly too high, like 10x or more too much. The company should do pretty well but they won't be approaching half the world car market imho.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#119

Post by arcturus17 »

_curious_ wrote: post #95
jiveturkey wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and here we witness the death of journalism

I guess we all have our limits? Just wish the newsletter was more concise with the opp to dig deeper...found that just reading a segment at times drags on and gets interrupted/ incomplete. A better approach would be to either pull a single paragraph from the full length piece, a TLDR type summary conclusion of the broader thought and hyperlink that clip to the expanded/full content on Bloomberg's site. This would res…

I love long-form newsletters and prefer them to reading content on the web (no ads, instant load times, the personal touch of having it delivered in my mailbox, breaking out of the "one more click" dynamic when browsing the web, etc.) . I guess it's why people like Ben Thomson or Matt Levine write and distribute them - ultimately, because there's an audience for it. The former even makes a pretty penny with it, and I'm sure there are others.

Your claim about open rates is unsubstantiated because I wouldn't have ever subscribed if it was just a summary and a link to Bloomberg (which has a free article limit to boot, if I remember correctly). So between the two of us that's only n = 2 and I think neither of us has any clue what metrics for that newsletter might look like.

Re: Former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun arrested

#120

Post by gumby »

lazyjones wrote: post #117
gumby wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deals done into {Germany,LA,SV,SF} from funds anywhere in world. That’s what I think is meant when someone says there is “almost venture capital” — is money available to invest there? These data are available from the usual sources online (Moneytree report, E&Y etc etc etc in English and German sources). I don’t know of any German funds that make venture investments outside Europe though doubtless some exist. Still,…

> Deals done into {Germany,LA,SV,SF} from funds anywhere in world. That's not the same as the available venture capital. If there are no good investments to be made, the potential venture capital simply isn't (all) invested. So the point that lack of VC is a problem is wrong, it's the attractive startups that are missing. It's the same in Austria - I invested in 2 startups, got a little burned and have since not inve…

If you think that’s the case why not invest in the USA?
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