Grifols has initiated legal action against Gotham City in the United States, as reported by the company in a relevant fact sent to the CNMV this Friday after the market closed. The pharmaceutical company alleges that the bearish fund benefited from its short position in the company by distributing a report with falsehoods about the accounting, communications and finances of the Catalan group. Some sources indicate that the fund pocketed up to 20 million euros with the operation. For this reason, the blood products giant demands the director and founder of the fund, Daniel Yu, General Industrial Partners, Cyrus de Weck and its investees “to compensate for the financial and reputational damage” caused to the company and its interested parties. due to reports that have questioned its solvency and accounting.
Grifols hired the American law firm Proskauer a week ago to take legal action against Gotham City in the United States, the fund that accused him at the beginning of January of falsifying its accounts and which caused a collapse of up to 40% of the company’s shares. Now the pharmaceutical group is suing the bearish fund for “libel and market manipulation”, as well as its top managers Daniel Yu and Cyrus de Weck. Also to General Industrial Partners, the venture capital fund from which they operate. The company has left up to 32% of its value on the stock market after accusations of manipulation of its accounts and therefore requests the United States District Court of the Southern District of New York for the defendants to pay it to “make up for the data.” financial and reputational damage caused to the company and its parties,” states the relevant fact sent to the CNVM. Grifols also requests precautionary measures so that the defendants recant and do not persist in their actions.
Responsible for illegal behavior
Grifols also requests before the New York court that the defendants be considered “fully responsible” for the “illegal behavior” alleged in the lawsuit. Grifols closed this Friday with a rise of 1.7%, up to 9,560 euros, thus accumulates a weekly increase of 14.24%. Despite the recovery of Grifols shares during the week, Its price is still 30% below the levels prior to the outbreak of the crisis due to the report by the bearish firm Gotham City Research, which accused the company of cooking up its accounts.
The company has undertaken this legal action the same week in which the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) has begun to analyze the information sent by Grifols itself on various aspects of its accounting, among them, the links of the Catalan company with the Scranton ‘family office’. “As occurs in this type of process, said analysis may require the collection of clarifying or complementary information and, given the complexity of the issues it deals with, it may take a few weeks without being able to determine a specific date for its conclusion,” said the last Tuesday the supervisory body, which has the firm determination to clarify the situation “as soon as possible” and to make public the conclusions of its actions.
Related news
“It’s not possible, obviously, anticipate these conclusions or the corresponding actions in the current phase, nor is there evidence to date, with the publicly available information, that the published and audited information of Grifols is not in accordance with the regulations,” indicated the body chaired by Rodrigo Buenaventura.
Beyond the review of Grifols’ financial information, The CNMV is also analyzing the conduct of the Gotham fund in terms of the content of its report, the way in which it was disseminated and the related market operations.. The objective, according to the supervisory body, is to determine whether such conduct is in accordance with European rules on market abuse, in particular those that address the dissemination of misleading information.