After a long search, the ailing real estate group ADLER Group has found an auditor for its annual financial statements.
The auditing company Avega should be appointed as auditor for the years 2022 and 2023, the company announced on Monday evening in Luxembourg. The shareholders are expected to make the decision at a general meeting, which is expected to take place on November 27th. Avega has declared that it will accept the order. According to the information, three further auditing companies are to take over the audit of the sub-areas relevant to the group.
The news was acknowledged with a jump in prices on the stock market. The share rose by 12.5 percent to 0.51 euros in early Tuesday trading. Since mid-September 2021, the paper has lost more than 97 percent of its value. The ADLER Group came into the sights of the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) about two years ago following allegations from short seller Fraser Perring. Before that, the shares were traded quite consistently above 20 euros.
“We on the ADLER Group Board of Directors are extremely pleased that, after a search of around 15 months and more than a hundred discussions, we can finally present a solution for auditing our annual and consolidated financial statements,” said Board Chairman Stefan Kirsten. ADLER has thus completed the program that began in February 2022 to deal with the allegations of a short seller.
In April, a court gave the company the green light to restructure. At the end of June, the Frankfurt public prosecutor’s office and the Federal Criminal Police Office searched the offices of the subsidiary ADLER Real Estate on suspicion of false accounting, market manipulation and breach of trust.
The auditing firm KPMG had refused ADLER its certificate for 2021. The group then published the figures in the spring of last year without an audit report. KPMG rejected the appointment as auditor of the 2022 figures by a Berlin court. In 2021, ADLER recorded a net loss of almost 1.2 billion euros.
The company not only has to deal with the allegations, but is also under pressure due to increased interest rates and high financing requirements. The company has thinned its portfolio and sold properties to reduce its debt.
The ADLER share rose in XETRA trading at times to double digits up to 0.5460 euros, most recently it was only 0.4 percent higher at 0.45 euros.
LUXEMBOURG (dpa-AFX)
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