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It’s been a wild ride for Wirecard. When the German payments firm premiered on the prestigious blue-chip Dax index just two years ago, shares were priced at €200 apiece. Today, prices hit as low as €20 per share, forcing out chief executive Markus Braun and leaving the future of the digital payments firm in question.
In its relatively short history, Wirecard has received a lot of investor hype. Its €24bn (£21.7bn) valuation in 2018 booted 150-year-old Commerzbank off its long-held position on the main German index, and swiftly earned Wirecard its reputation as Germany’s fintech darling.
“What isn’t going to be totally clear in the case of Wirecard, is how much of its share price drop is going to be an element of correction against an over-hyped valuation versus the fact that they don’t look like they’re in control of some of their trustee accounts,” says Simon Bittlestone, chief executive of financial analytics firm Metapraxis.
For Bittlestone, the problem is one of ill health in the accounting industry rather than problems within the firm itself — and it might not spell the end of the road for Wirecard. Read the full article in CITY A.M. here
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