Mr. Lipp, is the fraud allegation against Grenke over? Are all allegations off the table?
Bernd Freytag
Business correspondent Rhein-Neckar-Saar based in Mainz.
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It is over in so far as all of the shortsellers' main allegations have been settled - from our point of view and from the point of view of the auditors.
The cash in hand is just as valuable as the leasing receivables and our investments.
We have not done money laundering or defrauded retailers or our customers.
What remains is the request from the financial supervisory authority Bafin to improve our internal controls and the quality of our processes.
As chairman of the supervisory board, why are you only now speaking, almost a year after you tackled investor Fraser Perring and his analyst firm Viceroy so hard?
We were under constant observation by the public and the capital markets.
Against this background, the Supervisory Board felt it was its duty to first wait for the results of the examinations and the attestation.
Now that the unqualified attestation is available, the situation is different.
Will you publish the final report of the supervisory authority?
No.
Why this? Investors and employees have been waiting for this for months?
In the very extensive report by the auditing firm Mazars commissioned by BaFin, customer real names are named and the scoring processes we use to check customers are shown in detail. It is not only legitimate that we do not reveal the secrets of our business model to competitors, but we are also obliged to do so to our shareholders. Instead, we published the crucial parts of the interim report, making it clear that most of the allegations, as I have just listed, are absolutely baseless. Today we are the best-audited financial services provider in all of Europe. Auditors have probably never turned a company so backwards and forwards.
If so, the attack wiped out a lot of money with no substance. Are you going to take legal action against Perring?
We've explored this with our lawyers, but haven't decided yet.
It would be difficult to file a lawsuit.
The attackers are based abroad and it is doubtful whether there are any assets to fall back on.
Everything was very cleverly arranged.
That is why we are now concentrating first on implementing the measures that we discussed with BaFin.
What exactly does the supervisory authority require?
Basically, it's about improving our internal controls and processes in terms of structure and personnel.
In the past we have not documented everything sufficiently, some have only been done verbally.
From a supervisory point of view, however, they now have to document everything they do or not do in writing.
In particular, we will further develop our money laundering prevention, compliance and governance.
What exactly are you going to do now?
We have agreed appropriate improvement packages with BaFin, and we will now work through them step by step by the end of the year.
So we still have something to do.