The Austrian IT company S&T wants to bring in an independent expert after massive allegations by the short seller Fraser Perring.
The auditing company Deloitte had been commissioned with an external forensic examination of the allegations raised by Perring's analysis firm Viceroy Research, S&T announced on Tuesday.
In addition, the supervisory board will appoint an independent expert to the management board who, as chief compliance officer, will deal with the issues of law, compliance and corporate governance.
In terms of content, S&T CEO Hannes Niederhauser again rejected Perring's allegations, which had caused the S&T share to plummet by a third two weeks ago.
She has only partially recovered since then.
S&T published a detailed response to the allegations on Tuesday.
"Our statement shows that Viceroy Research has made numerous far-reaching misjudgments in its report that do not stand up to an objective examination," said Niederhauser.
Apple supplier Foxconn is the largest shareholder
Viceroy Research did not contact S&T before the publication of its report in order to validate the allegations made in it. Viceroy described S&T as a "roll up", that is, a buying machine that acquires many IT companies, particularly in Eastern Europe, very quickly and without thorough examination. These would not be integrated. In addition, S&T does not show many participations transparently enough. The technology group from Austria, which belongs to the Tec-Dax, has a turnover of around 1.3 billion euros with more than 6,000 employees. The largest single shareholder is the Chinese Apple supplier Foxconn through its subsidiary Ennoconn with 26.6 percent.
"Operationally, we are still within the expected framework and are sticking to our forecast for the current financial year." S&T had already had to deal with critical reports from analysts last year. Niederhauser had announced a simplification of the corporate structure and the appointment of a new auditor S&T has now announced that KPMG should take over from EY from next year, and the annual general meeting in 2022 will have to decide on this.
Behind Viceroy Research is the speculator Fraser Perring, who has been known since the Wirecard bankruptcy.
He was one of the early warnings in the payment processor scandal.
Since then he has made a name for himself in Germany with his reports on the leasing specialist Grenke and the real estate company Adler Group.
The share prices of the two companies also crashed sharply after allegations and have only been able to recover slightly since then.
S & T's shares initially recovered after the statement and rose 3.5 percent in early trading on Tuesday.