FORMER PORSCHE SE chief financial officer Holger Haerter is one of three managers charged over statements made to a bank when the holding company refinanced a €10 billion loan in 2009.
The men are accused of understating Porsche’s liquidity needs by €1.4 billion if all purchase options the company held on Volkswagen AG shares had been exercised, said Stuttgart prosecutors. Mr Haerter will fight the charges, said his attorney, Anne Wehnert. Along with the criminal investigation, investors in the US and Germany are suing Porsche, accusing the company of misleading them about plans to take control of Volkswagen. A planned merger was called off last year because of legal uncertainties related to the litigation.
“The risk to the merger will increase because the normal shareholder won’t want to pay too much and the funds will use this to their advantage to seek a significantly higher settlement,” said Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen.
The managers also withheld some data about put options tied to VW shares that Porsche sold, prosecutors also said.
“An economy university professor specialising in options trading confirmed after a thorough review of the facts, that the prosecutors’ method regarding the alleged liquidity need isn’t viable, so the statements given to the bank were correct,” said Ms Wehnert.
The bank didn’t say it hadn’t been adequately informed, she said. Porsche dropped €2.12, or 4.4 per cent, to €45.92 at the close of trading in Frankfurt.
Porsche said in October of that year it controlled most of VW’s common stock, causing the shares to surge as short-sellers raced to cover their positions. There are four suits pending at a court in Braunschweig, Germany, with plaintiffs seeking a total of more than €2 billion in damages.
Porsche has denied the allegations. Porsche SE is the publicly traded holding company that has a majority of VW’s common shares and owns 50.1 per cent of the German sports-car maker of the same name.
VW owns the remaining 49.9 per cent of the automotive business. – (Bloomberg)
