Once upon a time, around 1999, there was a small company called Wirecard that operated as a payment processing business. The company grew, became publicly traded on the Deutsche Börse, and eventually its share price reached €191.3, attaining a market valuation of €26 billion (U.S. $31 billion) that made it one of Germany’s top 100 companies. Seemingly, all was going very well at Wirecard, but not everyone was convinced by the numbers. Some people determined they were too good to be true.
In the meantime, Deutsche Bank, Germany’s biggest bank formed back in 1870, was suffering from years of poor risk management, and its share price was falling. The burdens of significant regulatory penalties, losses incurred through bad practices, bad loans, and restructuring costs were taking their toll. Having once traded at €159.59 a share in 2007, the price had fallen to as low as €4.47 in 2019.
