According to a ruling by the Frankfurt Higher Regional Court, Wirecard shareholders still have no claim for compensation for their share price losses against the financial supervisory authority BaFin.

On Friday, the Court of Appeal confirmed a ruling by the Regional Court of Frankfurt in the second instance. A shareholder had sued the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) for alleged failures in the supervision of the Bavarian payment processor and for abuse of office. Wirecard had slipped into insolvency in 2020 after it emerged that an alleged credit balance of 1.9 billion euros in escrow accounts did not exist.

BaFin was only secondarily responsible for checking Wirecard's balance sheets at the time, the OLG ruled. In view of the allegations against Wirecard in 2019, it finally initiated a special audit by the upstream "balance sheet police" DPR. There was no evidence that it should have done so earlier or taken the audit upon itself. Furthermore, it was "not possible to establish that the plaintiff would not have suffered damage if it had intervened earlier". In any case, even in the event of a breach of official duties, shareholders would not be entitled to claim damages from the Bonn authority because it was acting solely in the public interest and not for the protection of investors.

The Wirecard scandal has been under criminal investigation at the Munich Regional Court since December, with former CEO Markus Braun as the main defendant. However, shareholders can expect no more compensation from him for the billions of euros in losses than from the insolvent company itself. Many are therefore resorting to lawsuits against BaFin or the auditing firm EY, which had confirmed Wirecard's balance sheets for years.

(Report by Alexander Hübner, edited by Ralf Bode. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets).)