2009-02-16seekingalpha.com

Porsche has long contended that its option trades in Volkswagen were driven by "industrial logic as it built a stake in Europe's largest car maker." However at its January 31 shareholder meeting, CFO Holger Härter made a disclosure that can dramatically weaken this position and make the legal claims of complaining hedge funds strong enough to potentially lead to civil and criminal claims against the company. Härter said at the shareholder meeting that Porsche "has also arranged share options to generate liquidity. The underlying shares were referring to Dax companies and not Volkswagen." The company, acting as a full-blown hedge fund, made €400 million placing bets on several German blue-chip shares, in addition to the €6.8 billion from Volkswagen. It will be a very tough sell to BaFin that the company's finance division was speculating in one set of companies (i.e., the Dax) but innocently trading massive amounts of VOW options with no manipulative intentions.



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