ACTIONS CORNER
The FSA has slapped a fine of £595,000 (around €690,000) on Commerzbank for errors in trade reports. The bank’s London subsidiary has to pay the authority the administrative fine for having in the past two years, despite repeated warnings, complied with its reporting duty on securities transactions erroneously or not at all, stated the FSA on 27 April. The British stock-exchange regulator wants to use the data to crack down on such things as market abuse or insider trading. The bank is said to have hampered these checks.
In a trial that started in early April in New York, Deutsche Bank employee Jon-Paul Rorech and hedge-fund manager Renato Negrin are answering charges of insider trading. Rorech allegedly passed price-relevant information to Negrin, who on the basis of these tips made profits of 1.2 million dollars, alleges US securities regulator SEC.
On 19 April Deutsche Bank came to an arrangement with former IR head Wolfram Schmitt and former head of security services for continental Europe Rafael Schenz to terminate their employment by mutual agreement. The bank dismissed these two employees because it accused them of being responsible for spying on critical shareholder Michael Bohndorf, who is said to have connections to Leo Kirch.
The media taycoon has however ended his eight years vendetta by failing definitively with his complaint against Rolf-E. Breuer of offences. In an unappealable decision, the Court threw out as inadmissible the Kirch camp’s attempt to force public prosecutors to prefer criminal charges.
Hungary’s financial-market regulator PSZÁF has condemned Deutsche Bank to a fine of 90 million forint (around €340.000) for controversial currency transactions. Allegedly, the bank’s targeted speculation against the Hungarian forint in October 2008 contributed to the currency’s rapid decline, which brought Hungary to the verge of collapse.
In the Siemens bribery trial, Munich Regional Court on 20 April condemned two former managers of the DAX group to the already announced probation periods, following their full confessions. Michael Kutschenreuter, former head of the telecoms finance sector, got two years’ probation and a €160,000 fine. Kutschenreuter’s former accountant got 18 months’ probation and has to pay four social institutions a total of €40,000 as a condition of probation. Investigations of ex CFO Neubürger and ex director Ganswindt are still going on. Siemens is demanding €15 million from Neubürger and €5 million from Ganswindt.
The class action against future Porsche subsidiary VW started by Elliott, Glenhill and GCM Little Harbor in federal court in Manhattan has now been joined by 18 other funds. According to the suit, ex CEO Wendelin Wiedeking caused the plaintiffs some 2 billion dollars in damages through untransparent share transactions. The plaintiffs allege inter alia that Wiedeking was still claiming in talks with the funds in October 2008 that he did not wish to go over the threshold of 75% of VW shares. That meant Porsche was deliberately deceiving the funds. According to Handelsblatt, Porsche says the suit is without merit because “we always complied with capital-market law in force.”