DGAP-News

Statement by AURELIUS Equity Opportunities SE & Co. KGaA on the short attack by Gotham City and outlook on the development of the business - Seite 2

Achieving negative goodwill upon the acquisition of companies is an intrinsic component of the business model and AURELIUS has always been very transparent in disclosing and explaining it.

Re Contingent liabilities

Contingent liabilities are not overstated. Guarantees given to buyers of businesses are part of normal M&A transactions and materialize only in exceptional cases. The example of Wellman cited in the report demonstrates this well. The presumed "risk" at Wellman mentioned in the report never materialized and the last guarantee tranche expired in Nov 2016.

Re Insolvencies

AURELIUS has since 2006 acquired almost 80 companies all of which were in a special situation. While AURELIUS was able to restructure most of them in some cases insolvencies could not be avoided, especially when insolvency regime tools such as ESUG (in Germany) and pre-pack (in the UK) were used to actively safe a company.

Re Net Asset Value

NAV is a model and as such always subject to assumptions. With regard to most of the exits we had since publishing the NAV the purchase price was always close to NAV. Discount factors used are published quarterly and influenced by interest rate changes. As such it is not surprising that they are lower today then a few years ago.

Re Auditor

AURELIUS has been audited by Warth & Klein Grant Thornton since 2010. While not a member of the big four, Grant Thornton is among the top ten auditing companies in the world with a well reputed network and presence in 130 countries.

Re Why not an unqualified audit?

For more than ten years, the audit has led to no reservations; the audit opinion has only been qualified with regard to the disclosure of individual purchase prices paid in acquisitions under IFRS 3 and 8. We strongly believe that disclosing purchases prices would have a negative competitive impact in comparison to non-listed competitors and therefore have never done so

Re Is Dirk Markus CEO and CFO in one person?

Dirk Markus is CEO of AURELIUS and lives in London because he is in charge of the international portfolio of Aurelius as well as Investor Relations. Steffen Schiefer is CFO of AURELIUS and has been so successfully since 2012.