German regulators said on Sunday that they had imposed a moratorium on business activity by a niche investment bank in Frankfurt that played a prominent role in attempts by the Porsche family to take over Volkswagen several years ago.
The German banking regulator, known as Bafin, said that it ordered a halt to financial transactions by Maple Bank GmbH, the German subsidiary of Maple Financial Group Inc of Canada. With obligations of about 2.6 billion euros (US$2.9 billion) the bank is overly indebted, Bafin said. Maple Bank is also the target of a tax evasion investigation that led to raids on bank offices in September last year.
It was the first time since December 2012 that German regulators have ordered a bank to close. Maple Bank has about 5 billion euros in assets and is not big enough to pose a threat to the stability of the financial system, Bafin said in a statement.
Maple Bank was at the center of an attempt in 2008 by Porsche, the sports car maker, and its family owners to take over Volkswagen AG. The takeover bid is also the focus of a criminal trial under way in Stuttgart, Germany, against two former Porsche executives accused of market manipulation. Porsche eventually failed to achieve its goal of acquiring 75 percent of Volkswagen, and Volkswagen wound up buying Porsche instead. However, the deal left the Porsche family with a majority of Volkswagen’s voting shares and four seats on the supervisory board.
The Porsche family’s oversight of Volkswagen came under criticism on Sunday from the head of Norway’s Government Pension Fund, which — with US$800 billion in assets — is one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.
The fund, which invests Norway’s oil wealth, has a 1.2 percent stake in Volkswagen. The carmaker, based in Wolfsburg, Germany, has been tainted by its admission in September that it programmed 11 million cars to cheat on emissions tests.
Wendelin Wiedeking, the former chief executive of Porsche, and Holger Haerter, the former chief financial officer, are on trial in Stuttgart on charges that they deliberately misled investors in October 2008 to drive up the Volkswagen share price. Wiedeking and Haerter are contesting the charges. A verdict is expected by the end of this month.
Porsche SE, the Porsche family holding company, has not had any business dealings with Maple Bank for several years and has no financial exposure to it, Albrecht Bamler, a spokesman for Porsche, said on Sunday.
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