Wirecard chief executive resigns after 1.9 billion euro hole in the balance sheet discovered

[sandensea]

Markus Braun has resigned as the chief executive of German payments processor Wirecard, a day after the company said it couldn’t account for roughly a quarter of the cash on its balance sheet.

In a terse statement, Wirecard WDI, -35.06%, WCAGY, -28.71%, said Braun resigned by mutual agreement and with immediate effect.

Banks have the ability to terminate €2 billion worth of loans if Wirecard can’t finalize its 2019 accounts on Friday, according to Wirecard. Analysts at UBS said that is likely a reference to a €1.75 billion syndicated loan, on which Wirecard has drawn down €1 billion.

Wirecard sold a €900 million convertible bond to SoftBank Group in April.

At: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/shares-of-wirecard-plunge-for-a-second-day-on-deadline-for-accounts-to-be-published-2020-06-19

Wirecard's Markus Braun: I know nothing.

[Rainbow Droid]

1. This is a huge, huge story. One of the main investors in Wirecard is Deutsche Bank.

And 2 billion dollars just "went missing".

[sandensea]

2. Republicans like to think corruption is strictly a 3rd world problem

The darker and oilier the skin of the people, so the thinking goes, the more corrupt.

But of course it's a human problem. Just ask the Defense contractors - who can't "account" for $3 trillion+.

[Rainbow Droid]

3. It's much worse than that. They sincerely believe that when they do such things it's not corruption.

If you're comfortable with lying to yourself anything can be justified, denied, or ignored as needed, and you will always believe you have the moral high ground no matter your position nor how you act upon it.

[sandensea]

4. True. Right-wingers like to bemoan 'entitlements' .

But you'd be hard-pressed to find people with bigger senses of entitlement that theirs.

In Argentina, there's currently a big hubbub over the possible nationalization of Vicentín - the country's 6th largest agro-exporter.

Right-wingers have quickly taken up the issue as a battle horse, organizing (scantily-attended) protests under the banners of "In defense of private property" and "We're all Vicentín" - a bastardization of France's "We're All Charlie Hebdo" in 2015.

But Vicentín's owners basically hollowed out the firm, leaving $1.4 billion in bad debts to 2,600 creditors - a bust-out much like Bain Capital's with Toys 'r Us, Paul Singer's with Delphi auto parts, and Lampert's with Sears.

They basically took the money and offshored it to Switzerland.

$400 million of that debt is with the Argentine public sector, plus $220 million with the World Bank (!). And 1,900 creditors are farmers themselves, owed an average of $200,000 each for purchased grain that Vicentín never paid for.

Many are small farmers that may fold if they're not paid soon.

But I guess their right to private property doesn't count.