The high flying star of the German Dax, Wirecard has filed for insolvency. It is yet another remarkable collapse of a Company viewed as a European Tech Champion. Their Auditor EY have said that ‘ this was an elaborate and sophisticated fraud involving multiple parties around the world in different institutions with a deliberate aim of deception ‘. Meantime the Company admit that €1.9 billion of cash was missing ( perhaps I say it may never have existed ).
Some did see the writing on the wall , the short sellers who prey on misery, who congregate around catastrophe and who rejoice in losses making it all a mass dose of that sick syndrome, schadenfreude ( which just happens to be a word of German origin )
With a founder Director arrested who denies ‘ any wrongdoing ‘ it remains to be seen how even the Auditor missed the €1.9 billion. Somewhere Wirecards’ Wires got crossed and the Wires that ? Will soon be answered. If ‘ multiple parties ‘ are involved then how did they ever expect to operate unnoticed ?
One such shorter was Marshall Wace from England who mimicking the 1966 World Cup victory over their German counterpart allegedly made 150 million euros profit from the debacle last week alone. Someone profits from loss and someone pays a price, possibly the Directors who would be found personally liable for trading whilst technically insolvent. Somehow however I don’t think they would be able to stump up the 1.9 billion and if they did there would have been no need for any fraud in the first place, if indeed that proves to be the cause.
Wirecard was I understand a sophisticated payment money system, so sophisticated that it managed to pay itself and in doing so created the voodoo economics and Balance Sheet Bungle seen not for the first or the last time….again. Oh dear, very dear. Lastly Congratulations Marshall Wace the continually acceptable face of capitalism that proves in the flat world one person’s loss is another’s gain with redistribution of wealth and not creation, thereby lies the real problem.
qbitblogger 