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This guy literally called them, multiple times, to their whistleblower hotline asking "Do you speak english?" "Of course, what's up?" "So I've been looking into

This guy literally called them, multiple times, to their whistleblower hotline asking "Do you speak english?" "Of course, what's up?" "So I've been looking into Wirecard..." "Oh sorry, no, we don't speak english" (hang up). That's not being short handed, that's being negligent. They knew something was up with Wirecard, and they actively tried to ignore all the warnings, and now all stakeholders have lost ~80% of the share value. So yeah, the DAX is a joke and Germany is a banana republic.

sukilot 6y ago
That's not negligent, that's malicious.
HenryBemis 6y ago
German regulators in short: "we see no evil, we hear no evil. We will only rain penalties if someone else does ALL the work/investigation, and the shit will hit the front page of some major newspaper/website, in which case we cannot play dumb any more." (these are airquotes - not actual statement)(to avoid any lawsuits). Just have a look at the penalties that DB have been hit with over the years, the dieselgate fiasco and you get the spirit on how they work. External auditors for German companies follow the same approach. It is not negligence, it is complicity. At the same time they have the super tough privacy rules, I had to fly to Germany for a client (not DB or VW), to review some SOX docs, just to realize they were doing (what I call) "photocopy audit", they just copied last year's tables, they used tipp-ex to change dates and remove names and signatures, and they were the same files to send outside Germany. Oh the shock and horror when I asked for the originals (client couldn't say no anymore)(I wasn't removing/copying data, just reviewing and taking sanitized notes with me). They cannot be that stupid. I don't buy this.
- looping__lui 6y ago
  Not only German regulators are like that... The bigger the country, the more absurd things get... Think Madoff, mortgage-crisis, etc. “The Big Short” and “Fooling Some of the People All of the Time” are quite interesting reads in that respect. And as one Finance professor once put it: “If you do business or buy stock in ‘the far east’, P/Ls and Balance Sheets are just fake”. Having seen what is done in some countries - yes, it’s insane.

sukilot 6y ago

That's not negligent, that's malicious.

HenryBemis 6y ago

German regulators in short: "we see no evil, we hear no evil. We will only rain penalties if someone else does ALL the work/investigation, and the shit will hit the front page of some major newspaper/website, in which case we cannot play dumb any more." (these are airquotes - not actual statement)(to avoid any lawsuits). Just have a look at the penalties that DB have been hit with over the years, the dieselgate fiasco and you get the spirit on how they work. External auditors for German companies follow the same approach. It is not negligence, it is complicity. At the same time they have the super tough privacy rules, I had to fly to Germany for a client (not DB or VW), to review some SOX docs, just to realize they were doing (what I call) "photocopy audit", they just copied last year's tables, they used tipp-ex to change dates and remove names and signatures, and they were the same files to send outside Germany. Oh the shock and horror when I asked for the originals (client couldn't say no anymore)(I wasn't removing/copying data, just reviewing and taking sanitized notes with me). They cannot be that stupid. I don't buy this.

looping__lui 6y ago
Not only German regulators are like that... The bigger the country, the more absurd things get... Think Madoff, mortgage-crisis, etc. “The Big Short” and “Fooling Some of the People All of the Time” are quite interesting reads in that respect. And as one Finance professor once put it: “If you do business or buy stock in ‘the far east’, P/Ls and Balance Sheets are just fake”. Having seen what is done in some countries - yes, it’s insane.