Adler - comment

The German Bundestag is expecting Bafin President Mark Branson to present their findings on Adler next week. The session will be confidential. Parliamentary Finance Secretary Katya Hessel is under pressure to bring some light into the situation. Bafin have been probing Adler’s books since August last year without producing any visible result. Having begun their investigation two months before the short seller report, Bafin’s initial focus have been "M&A transactions within the Adler Group”. We are still not entirely sure what that means in German or English. Since then, Bafin have also begun to investigate the recent price drop in the shares for insider dealing. What we are not hearing, however, is any investigation into the related party allegations. To that end, Bafind are still “evaluating" the KPMG report, which probably means they are interviewing KPMG and are testing their back-channels for likelihood of success of any action. Still, Bafin must be feeling some pressure to act on something. We may or may not see next week what comes of it.