Archive for the ‘Germany’ Category

Thomson Financial / Hemscott writes about a former investment manager at Deutsche Telekom AG and a Bonn-based trader are being investigated for alleged insider trading practices said, a report in Focus magazine, citing charges filed at a Bonn-based German court.

According to the charges, the court is looking into suspected illegal trading practices involving option certificates which created profits of more than 2.5 million euros.

The magazine said the 45-year-old ex-head of Telekom’s New Work investor relations division is being investigated for leaking sensitive ‘market-related’ information between November, 2004 and August, 2006 to a trader in Bonn.

Deutsche Bank is cooperating with an investigation by a German prosecutor’s office into reports of insider trading of IKB Deutsche Industriebank shares, the bank said.

Deutsche Bank said the Frankfurt prosecutor’s office had told it that a complaint had been filed accusing one of the bank’s employees of insider trading.

Deutsche Bank said that to the best of its knowledge, the inquiry did not refer to trading in the bank’s accounts but to trading on behalf of clients, and that the bank had not benefited from it.

FT.com wrote that Louis Gallois, chief executive of EADS, has warned France’s stock market authority that its investigation into alleged insider dealing at the Franco-German aerospace group could threaten the company’s fragile recovery unless it turns up “clear evidence” of wrongdoing.

“You can’t condemn people who have huge responsibilities, you can’t attack a company … without clear evidence,” he told the Financial Times in a recent interview. “This company is clearly on [the path to] recovery. I don’t want that jeopardised on rumours, on feeling. I want evidence, clear evidence. It’s too important.”

Mr Gallois, who says he is “fully confident” in his management team, has spared no effort in recent weeks to make his concerns known, as the AMF, the French regulator, finalised its report on controversial share sales by directors and shareholders in the weeks ahead of a shock profits warning.

The report will also take a view on whether the EADS board misled the market about delays to the flagship A380 superjumbo project at its Airbus subsidiary that led to the profit warning. The governing board of the AMF is expected to meet today to weigh the findings, handed to the 15-member “college” several days ago. A preliminary report on the allegations was leaked to French media last autumn and signalled concerns over insider dealing “on a massive scal e”, which the company and all those involved deny strongly.

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