Four weeks after the accounting scandal at a German metalworking company became public, the general meeting of voestalpine will take place in Linz on Wednesday. The tension beforehand is high. Because: The bosses of the steel company will have to deal with uncomfortable questions.
The Design Center in Linz: The voestalpine general meeting will take place here on Wednesday from 10:00, for which a shuttle bus service from Vienna has even been set up. The agenda includes fifteen items, including the election of the new supervisory board around Wolfgang Eder.
The tension is high. Because there is a rumbling among the shareholders. Trigger: The fact that the figures of a company in the metalworking division of the steel group have been embellished for more than ten years. The incorrect bookings with regard to the bookkeeping and valuation of assets that improved the result amounted to around 100 million euros.
“There will be a lot of questions about this,” says investor Rupert-Heinrich Staller. What is going on in the minds of investors? “How bad is the damage really? How could this have happened in the first place?”, says Florian Beckermann of the investors’ association, who speaks of a ‘communication meltdown’.
The accounting scandal was addressed by voestalpine in the 2023/24 annual report from page 112. The matter has been publicly known since the report was published on June 5 and was discovered internally in February.
“This is a new wound”
Have things not calmed down yet? “No,” says Beckermann, “that’s a new wound.”
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
