Laura de la Quintana Madrid

Madrid

Updated Friday, January 26, 2024-19:17

Grifols has fulfilled its threat and, finally, has filed a lawsuit before the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York against the entire network of Gotham City Research, the analysis firm that on January 9

caused a

real collapse in its price

after stating in its report that the Catalan pharmaceutical company falsifies its accounts to reduce its debt.

The company has decided

to sue the founder of the company, Daniel Yu

, as well as the

hedge fund

owned by it General Industrial Partners (GIP, according to its acronym in English) and extends the lawsuit to Cyrus de Weck, and its investees to whom it demands "reparation for financial and reputational damage caused to the company" and its shareholders.

According to Grifols' complaint in the letter sent to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) on Friday afternoon, the defendants "obtained a considerable short position" or downward position on the company's shares "by subsequently publishing and distributing a

report with falsehoods about the accounting, communications, finances and integrity of Grifols"

. For this reason, the blood products firm asks Gotham City and all those involved for "financial compensation" for any damage that may have been caused and the "application of precautionary measures so that the defendants retract and do not persist in their actions."

Grifols has accumulated several sessions of increases in the stock market, but despite this they have been insufficient to alleviate the initial losses since the publication of the Gotham report. With a capitalization slightly above 5.9 billion euros,

the Catalan company suffers a drop in the market of more than 2.7 billion euros, close to 32% of its capitalization.

What Grifols denounces in its letter is the self-serving use of a devastating report against the pharmaceutical company through the different arms that Daniel Yu has.

One of them is a free investment fund called GIP and a

short

position emerged the day after the publication of the report for 0.57% of the capital.

It should be remembered that the CNMV only publishes bearish positions that exceed the 0.5% barrier. In any case, according to estimated calculations made by EL MUNDO, his profit from this operation was around 18 million euros.

Last Monday night Grifols sent all the information required by the regulator, which had given until Wednesday to obtain a response from the listed company. Likewise, the CNMV announced that it has also requested information from Gotham City as another player in the Spanish market to try to assess whether its report and the short position it opened in parallel could represent "market abuse", according to European regulation. . He has not given an estimated deadline for both resolutions.