Once the German online payment service provider was more valuable on the stock market than the Deutsche Bank. The supervisory authorities are now considering Wirecard, which also operates in Switzerland, as the trigger for a conflagration – and are stepping in.
This has never happened before. The Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (Bafin) has issued a complete short sale ban on shares of the German fintech company Wirecard. As reported, among other things, the agency “Reuters”, the supervision seems to fear that the turbulence of the Wirecard course could spread to other titles. The Bafin spoke of a “serious threat to market confidence”.
In fact, since the beginning of February, the share price of the German payment processor has been making leaps and bounds. Prices fluctuated by more than 20 percent per day. The Bafin sees short sellers at work, so-called short-sellers, who press the course. Since the end of last January, the market value of Wirecard has almost halved, while the volume of short positions has increased significantly.
Investigations for newspaper reports
The onset of the turmoil coincides with a series of articles by the much acclaimed British newspaper Financial Times, which reported on alleged offsets at a Wirecard Asian subsidiary. Meanwhile, the author of the Financial Times article has been targeted by the Munich Public Prosecutor’s Office. This determines on suspicion of market manipulation with Wirecard shares.
In addition, the heated official reactions show how much Wirecard has gained in the German financial system – and thus in its own way has become “too big to fail”. Last fall, finews.ch also reported that fintech had for the first time overtaken Deutsche Bank in terms of market value.