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  "documentTitle": "Stroer SE & Co. KGaA (SAX)",
  "authorId": "51_Muddy_Waters",
  "authorName": "Carson C. Block",
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  "presentationDate": "2016-04-21 00:00:00",
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  "notes": "This is a research note page focusing on forensic accounting and corporate governance allegations.",
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      "kind": "callout",
      "text": "The lack of impairment supports our contention that the company is misleading investors about its performance.",
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      "text": "Ballroom was a rollup of media assets in Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Czech Republic. While we do not know its 2012 revenue, it reported post-acquisition 2013 revenue of €16.6 million. (Ballroom entered the Romanian market in 2009 (although this wasn’t publicly disclosed until 2011), followed by acquisitions in Poland (2010), Czech Republic (2011) and Turkey (2011). Poland-based private equity firm Enterprise Investors took a",
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      "kind": "paragraph",
      "text": "Dirk Ströer personally—could it be that Dirk Ströer controls Sambara Stiftung? From this, we infer that Dirk Ströer may be in violation of the law by not attributing the voting rights to himself.",
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      "text": "One of Ströer’s key early digital acquisitions was of Ballroom International CEE Holding in July 2013. Ballroom owned digital marketing companies in Turkey and Eastern Europe, and its largest operations were in Turkey and Poland. Ströer’s rationale for acquiring Ballroom was that Ballroom’s Turkey and Poland operations supposedly dovetailed nicely with Ströer’s international OOH business. The acquisition resulted in goodwill €18 million. Despite Ballroom appearing to have been a near total loss for Ströer, the company has not impaired the goodwill. The lack of impairment supports our contention that the company is misleading investors about its performance. In our view, unwinding the Ballroom debacle gave the company an opportunity to misleadingly boost reported Digital organic growth by close to five percentage points, and overall organic growth by approximately one percentage point. (See: Organic Growth in Digital and Overall Appear to be Greatly Overstated.)",
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      "text": "Footnotes 101-110 detailing financial statements, registry contacts, and revenue calculations.",
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      "text": "XI. Suspected Lack of Impairment for Apparently Failed Investments Suggests Lack of Accountability at Ströer",
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