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Company founder Wolfgang Grenke (archive photo): Systematically bought franchise companies that were too expensive?
Photo: Marijan Murat / dpa
The leasing group Grenke does not come to rest and again has to admit serious omissions in its business policy.
The company from Baden-Baden, which is listed in the MDax, has been under pressure for months after allegations by British investor Fraser Perring.
Perring accuses Grenke of fraud, money laundering and falsification of accounts;
at the same time, he was betting that stocks would crash.
At around 30 euros, the Grenke share costs only half as much as it did before the allegations were published in September.
On Friday night, Grenke published the interim status of the ongoing special audit by the auditor Mazars, who had been commissioned by the financial supervisory authority Bafin.
Mazars criticizes above all the accounting treatment of franchise companies, the lack of disclosure of companies that are personally linked to Grenke and its founder Wolfang Grenke ("Related Parties"), deficiencies in money laundering prevention and in parts of the customer credit business of Grenke's bank subsidiary - central points of Allegations of the investor Perring.
Is the partner a loved one?
Grenke finances companies borrowing office supplies or software against monthly installments (leasing) and buys outstanding receivables from customers (factoring) at a discount in order to collect the money themselves.
Company founder Grenke is currently suspending his supervisory board mandate, the day-to-day manager Mark Kindermann has already had to leave.
In addition, the board of directors led by Antje Leminsky recently decided to swiftly integrate franchise companies that had not yet been bought by Grenke.
Mazars' examiners are now also criticizing that this had not happened long ago.
For Wolfgang Grenke in particular, it is more serious that Mazars also complained that the founder's partner, Corina Stingaciu, "was not identified as a related party in group accounting - although the relationship with Wolfgang Grenke was known within the group." .
Perring believes that in the past, Grenke systematically bought expensive, loss-making franchises whose owners are closely connected to Grenke.
Grenke wrote the companies to excessive values in the consolidated balance sheet and thus inflated his profits.
In fact, Grenke took over companies abroad that ex-employees had founded together with CTP Handels- und Beteiligungs GmbH.
CTP has been indirectly owned by Wolfgang Grenke since January 2020, but it is unclear who was behind it and who benefited from the expensive takeovers;
the financial group itself claims not to know.
After all, according to Grenke, Mazars had confirmed that the purchase prices for acquired franchise companies were "reasonable in individual cases despite methodological deficits."
The purchase prices were not systematically inflated.
Mazars, on the other hand, is critical of the returns of the CTP and the other financial investors;
it is excessive.
It remains to be seen whether that means that Wolfgang Grenke and his friends have enriched themselves at the expense of the group;
In any case, the allegation has not been dispelled.
Dubious lending criticized
The Mazars auditors also criticize the dubious granting of loans amounting to 37 million euros to small and medium-sized companies, where either no or insufficient collateral was provided or the creditworthiness was not adequately checked.
"Mazars classifies the deficiencies as serious," the interim report continues.
This also applies to the bank's money laundering prevention, which according to Mazars does not fully meet the legal requirements.
However, there are no indications of systematic and active money laundering by the bank subsidiary.
Grenke wants to professionalize its money laundering prevention.
The fact that Mazars also found serious deficiencies in Grenke's internal control system, internal auditing and compliance is no longer all that surprising - the Bafin had already criticized this, whereupon the group parted with Kindermann.
Because of the special audits, the business result will not be known until the second quarter, Grenke said.
The company expects an after-tax result in the upper double-digit million range, the equity ratio at the end of 2020 was around 16 percent.
In the morning, CEO Leminsky wants to comment on the Mazars interim report in a conference call.
Then she will also have to face the open questions.
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