I always have pleasure in reporting major accounting frauds as it backs up the argument in my book Business Perspective Investing that the accounts of companies cannot be trusted and you need to look at other things to judge the quality of a company. But investors in German payments company Wirecard will be very disappointed that €1.9 billion has gone missing. It seems that information on “spurious cash balances” had been provided to their auditors (EY) by a third party (a trustee supposedly holding it).
The Financial Times has been running a series of articles over several months questioning the accounts of this company, but the shares are now down another 50% and it raises questions as to whether the company can survive.
Another story in the FT today was of organisations such as brewer Greene King and the Lloyds insurance market offering donations to charities supporting “diversity and inclusion” and were apologising for their past involvement in the slave trade. That’s for events before 1807 in Britain and 1865 in the USA when slavery was abolished. Greene King left the stock market in 2019. I just hope none of the companies in which I hold shares participates in this nonsense. Trying to rectify historic wrongs from 200 years ago is just unrealistic and totally unjustified when the persons affected are long dead. History is full of past injustices and it’s simply impossible to compensate for all of them.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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