Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wirecard files for insolvency after financial hole laid bare

dw.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 169 posts

Re: Wirecard files for insolvency after financial hole laid bare

#21

Post by mschuster91 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #5
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #2

The entire story is shameful. I can just hope the Germans learn lessons from this.

>I can just hope the Germans learn lessons from this. N'ah! When it comes to big banks, big industry, big infra projects, German state institutions are super corrupt, it makes Wall Street and the City of London look like saints.

German here. Big infra projects here rarely fail due to corruption. The way, way bigger issue is that in the last 30 years public service funding was drastically cut which meant that the oversight competence over projects was no longer in house. Overworked officials rubber-stamp utter bullshit because they have neither the knowledge nor the time to properly audit plans. Not just architectural or technical (hello BER fire suction system), but especially financial.

The mandate from the EU is that all kinds of stuff must be offered via tender europe-wide which is for many things a colossal waste of money and enviromental resources (e.g. a Polish company wins a tender for a construction project in Spain and now has to move all the machinery and staff through Europe and back, that's NOT sustainable!), and while government entities are allowed to judge bids by sustainability or profitability (i.e. purposefully offering an unprofitable bid in the hopes of making the profit with exploiting "change requests"), they rarely have the knowledge to do so.

Re: Wirecard files for insolvency after financial hole laid bare

#22

Post by smcl »

baxtr wrote: post #7
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #2

The entire story is shameful. I can just hope the Germans learn lessons from this.

I am really unsure if it's something "Germans" need to learn. It is probably something that could happen everywhere...

One weird thing I have noticed is that in the UK the phrase “The Germans” is often used instead of “Germany” (where it’s grammatically valid, of course) for some reason. It’s really noticeable if you watch British TV coverage of the World Cup or European Championships.

Don’t know if the OP is British or living there, but it’s possible that this is what’s happening and they don’t mean “all Germans ...” and just mean “The appropriate body in Germany the country ...

Re: Wirecard files for insolvency after financial hole laid bare

#24

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

Flockster wrote: post #11
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wirecard, Dieselgate, BER Airport, German gov wireing the whole country with copper instead of fiber because the ministry of infrastructure had connections to the copper business leaving the country's internet behind Ukraine, all Gov IT projects going to SAP or T-Systems with no accountability, etc. Nobody went to jail for any of those and in some cases it was never investigated. If you're on the DAX, you're untoucha…

Do you have a source for the copper claim? That is entirely new to me.

https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/deutschland-warum-unsere...

[Translated from German] Christian Schwarz-Schilling had been Post Minister under Helmut Kohl since 1982 and launched the German mobile phone network at the end of the 1980s. His political understanding of infrastructure can be seen in a disturbing fact: Until a few hours (!) before he was sworn in as Post Minister - Schwarz-Schilling was involved in a copper cable company. He sold his shares to Nixdorf. The company was then "one of the most important newcomers in the cable business". Contrary to most expert advice, Schwarz-Schilling pushed the extensive investment in copper cable instead of fibre optics during his term of office, in other words: politically, he acted entirely in the interests of the buyer of his shares. In any case, exactly 30 years ago, SPIEGEL called the mobile phone licensing for which Schwarz-Schilling was responsible "a festival of lobbyists".

The fact that nobody got jailed for this obvious corruption is staggering to me and German politicians dare lecture Southern Europe on corruption.

Re: Wirecard files for insolvency after financial hole laid bare

#25

Post by [deleted] »

Fnoord wrote: post #17
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wirecard, Dieselgate, BER Airport, German gov wireing the whole country with copper instead of fiber because the ministry of infrastructure had connections to the copper business leaving the country's internet behind Ukraine, all Gov IT projects going to SAP or T-Systems with no accountability, etc. Nobody went to jail for any of those and in some cases it was never investigated. If you're on the DAX, you're untoucha…

Scandals are everywhere, as is corruption. In comparison, Germany is #13 on the Democracy Index [1]. It is right below The Netherlands and Switzerland, the top countries being the Scandinavian ones, plus Anglo-Saxon countries (New Zealand, Canada, Australia). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

[deleted]

Re: Wirecard files for insolvency after financial hole laid bare

#26

Post by riffraff »

baxtr wrote: post #7
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #2

The entire story is shameful. I can just hope the Germans learn lessons from this.

I am really unsure if it's something "Germans" need to learn. It is probably something that could happen everywhere...

It's on the German financial monitor to have chosen "stop short selling" instead of "let's investigate this" when allegations surfaced last year.

In this sense, it's the Germans that need to learn something. It seems there is awareness of this[0].

Hopefully others will learn from it too, anyway.

[0]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-22/wirecard-...

Re: Wirecard files for insolvency after financial hole laid bare

#27

Post by raesene9 »

baxtr wrote: post #7
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #2

The entire story is shameful. I can just hope the Germans learn lessons from this.

I am really unsure if it's something "Germans" need to learn. It is probably something that could happen everywhere...

Whilst I wouldn't put it that way , it does seem like the German financial regulators and investment industry have something to learn from the Wirecard problem.

When the FT and others started raising concerns about Wirecard's finances, BaFin took what I believe was an unprecedented step and sued the FT.

A better approach might have been to launch an earlier investigation into whether the allegations had any substance to them.

There also need to be lessons learned from an audit perspective. EY signed off on previous years accounts which now appear that they might have had issues...

Re: Wirecard files for insolvency after financial hole laid bare

#28

Post by mschuster91 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #24
Flockster wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source for the copper claim? That is entirely new to me.

https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/web/deutschland-warum-unsere... [Translated from German] Christian Schwarz-Schilling had been Post Minister under Helmut Kohl since 1982 and launched the German mobile phone network at the end of the 1980s. His political understanding of infrastructure can be seen in a disturbing fact: Until a few hours (!) before he was sworn in as Post Minister - Schwarz-Schilling was involved in a c…

Holy hell. Thanks for this one.

Re: Wirecard files for insolvency after financial hole laid bare

#29

Post by raesene9 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #5
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #2

The entire story is shameful. I can just hope the Germans learn lessons from this.

>I can just hope the Germans learn lessons from this. N'ah! When it comes to big banks, big industry, big infra projects, German state institutions are super corrupt, it makes Wall Street and the City of London look like saints.

I'm not sure the City of London can be made to look like saints of financial regulation, given their previous problems with PPI mis-selling, and the disintegration of a number of supposedly "safe, well capitalized" banks in the 2007/8 crash.

Whilst you'd hope that lessons were learned, I'm not sure they were.

Post reply on HN