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Hedge fund investor Perring: Drastic allegations
Photo:
Hannah Mckay / REUTERS
Until a few days ago, Wolfgang Grenke was the prototype of the successful but unknown medium-sized company from the green field, one of those "hidden champions" who form the backbone of the German economy.
In more than 40 years, the 69-year-old from the tranquil Baden-Baden has led the company he founded to the M-Dax of medium-sized companies.
With rather brittle services: Grenke finances companies lending office supplies or software against monthly installments (leasing) and buys outstanding receivables from customers at a discount (factoring) in order to collect the money itself.
When Grenke moved to the supervisory board in 2018, he left the chairmanship to Antje Leminsky, a woman from East Germany - in this respect, too, the boss was a model boy.
He himself concentrated on representative duties and the role of patron of the arts.
That was easy, his family's stake in the company was worth more than a billion euros at times.
"I'm not such a good investor, but a good researcher"
Fraser Perring
This apparently ideal world no longer exists at the end of the week that hit the German economy the next low after the Wirecard scandal.
On Monday, London hedge fund investor Fraser Perring launched a head-on attack on Grenke.
The allegations, which his company Viceroy has summarized in a 64-page, drastically worded report, range from balance sheet fraud to crooked dealings with corporate insiders to facilitating money laundering.
The Grenke share lost more than half of its value within days.
A slump that almost never occurs outside of financial crises.
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