Crumbling Wirecard sells assets in Brazil

The company filed for insolvency owing creditors $4.7bn after disclosing a $2.2bn hole in its accounts

Wirecard's headquarters in Aschheim, near Munich. Reuters

Wirecard inked a deal to sell its operations in Brazil, its insolvency administrator said on Friday, the first asset of global operations to sell after the company collapsed amid an accounting scandal earlier this year.

An agreement in principle has also been reached to sell some operations in Britain, and the process of selling its North American operations are well advanced with a deal expected "shortly", the administrator said.

Wirecard was a rising star in corporate Germany, earning a spot as one of 30 blue chips, but in a dramatic fall from grace, Wirecard filed for insolvency owing creditors $4.7 billion (Dh17.3bn) after disclosing a $2.2bn hole in its accounts.

It had previously been lauded as a European FinTech star and was the newest member of the Dax 30 – the index of the biggest German companies listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange – with its valuation peaking at $28.3bn in August 2018.

Prosecutors suspect Wirecard executives of masterminding a criminal racket to fake the company's accounts and bilk creditors of billions of dollars.

The completion of the sale of Wirecard Brazil was to a subsidiary of PagSeguro Digital. The price was not disclosed.

The preliminary agreement in Britain is to sell Wirecard Card Solutions to Railsbank Technology, the administrator said. Railsbank declined to comment.

"The framework conditions of the Wirecard insolvency proceedings have been, and still are, very difficult," said Michael Jaffe, the administrator.