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EY has signed up its first new Dax-listed audit shopper because the collapse of funds group Wirecard regardless of a ban on successful auditing mandates from listed German corporations.
Qiagen, a biotech group listed in New York and Frankfurt, has employed the Huge 4 agency as its new group auditor from January, when it’s going to change KPMG, which has held the mandate for a decade.
EY took on the mandate months after accepting a two-year ban on taking up new listed audit shoppers in Germany following alleged violations of its skilled duties in its audits of Wirecard, which collapsed in 2020 in one among Europe’s greatest ever accounting scandals.
The mandate from Qiagen, which has €2bn in annual revenues and a market capitalisation of €10bn, highlights the constraints of nationwide audit regulation in Europe.
Whereas Qiagen’s European operational headquarters is within the German city of Hilden close to Düsseldorf and the corporate is among the 40 members of Germany’s blue-chip Dax index, it’s integrated within the Netherlands, having moved its authorized headquarters to Venlo in 1996.
“We’re a Dutch integrated firm with world shares listed within the US on the NYSE and in addition in Germany,” Qiagen mentioned in a press release.
German audit watchdog Apas didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The Wirecard fraud plunged EY Germany, which had issued unqualified audits for the funds group for nearly a decade, into disaster. Regardless of repeated whistleblower complaints and important press protection, the agency missed that €1.9bn in company money and half of Wirecard’s income have been faux.
After a multiyear investigation, Apas concluded that EY’s audits had been “on the very least” negligent and in some instances grossly negligent, the Monetary Instances beforehand reported. Nevertheless, it didn’t set up whether or not the agency had acted with felony intent.
Qiagen instructed the FT in its assertion that it had “carried out a radical overview of the small group of worldwide audit corporations” that would work for it, given the requirement to fulfill each US and EU requirements.
The corporate added that shareholders “voted 99.9 per cent in favour” of EY at Qiagen’s newest annual assembly in June. It formally mandated EY’s Dutch division Ernst & Younger Accountants LLP nevertheless it additionally signed an engagement letter with the Huge 4 agency’s German unit.
Following the Wirecard scandal, EY misplaced a sequence of high-profile German audit shoppers, together with Commerzbank, Deutsche Telekom, DWS and state-owned lender KfW, and didn’t win any new mandates even earlier than the two-year ban formally began to chew this 12 months.
The agency has overhauled its German authorized construction to separate audit and consulting companies, resulting in allegations from former Wirecard shareholders over potential asset stripping that they declare will make it tougher if not unattainable to implement injury claims over its allegedly flawed audits of the defunct funds group.
Former traders and Wirecard’s administrator are suing EY for billions of euros in damages in a sequence of slow-moving and long-running lawsuits whose outcomes stay unsure.
Individuals aware of the matter instructed the FT that EY was pitching for a sequence of extra high-profile audit mandates in Germany that may change into obtainable from 2026, together with pharma and agrochemicals group Bayer, retailer Metro and vacation operator Tui.
EY declined to remark.
