There was a very good article on Wirecard by fund manager Barry Norris on Citywire yesterday. It was headlined “Wirecard raised more red flags than a communist rally” and explained how he thought it was probably a fraud as long ago as March 2018.
He met the former CFO of the company Burkhard Ley in that year but he seemed unable to answer the basic question of “Precisely from which activities did they generate revenue”. One particularly telling comment from my knowledge of the payments sector was this: “When pressed for a specific response on how much of the company’s revenues came from online pornography and illegal casinos, Burkhard claimed ignorance and just grinned, like a well-coiffed cat who not only had just had the cream but who had also just eaten the family pet hamster”.
The Financial Times published allegations about false accounts at the company in January 2019, and again later. But the German financial regulator took no action and even banned short selling of the company’s shares.
Another very negative sign was in early 2020 when the company raised more debt even though it had high profits margins, limited capital expenditure, paid minimal dividends and according to its accounts was generating cash.
The latest news is that former Wirecard CEO Markus Braun has been arrested based on allegations of false accounting.
What can be learned from this case? Firstly that company management who are reluctant to answer detail questions about the business are not people you can trust. The bullshitters who wish to talk about market dynamics and their position in a hot sector rather than the details on how they actually make money (i.e. the business model) are particularly suspect. Secondly that accounts cannot be trusted – not even the cash figures even though they should be simple to verify. See also Patisserie and Globo for examples of where the cash was simply not there. Where there are international businesses with multiple auditors involved, they are even more likely to be unreliable.
Frauds rarely come out of the blue but there are warning signs much earlier than the final disclosure of unexplained problems and company collapse. So it took 4 years at Wirecard for the truth to be generally acknowledged even though issues with the accounts were widely publicised. Why did investors stay faithful to the company? Because investors are always reluctant to admit to their own blind faith in the business particularly when the share price has handsomely rewarded them in the past. People do by nature trust management of companies when the correct approach should be the contrary. Charismatic leaders who dominate their companies are frequently the ones to be wary about.
But it’s never too late to change your mind about a company and sell. A reluctance to sell on negative news is a common psychological trait – it’s called loss aversion. Wirecard investors certainly had plenty of opportunity to do so.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
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