So it’s perfectly understandable that Porsche CEO Wendelin Wiedeking would have a visceral objection to reporting the sports car maker’s results each quarter. He says forcing companies to divulge returns every three months is a system for “generating trading commissions,” not for keeping investors informed.
For its refusal to publish quarterly results, the Stuttgart-based speed merchant was booted out of Deutsche Börse’s Frankfurt Stock Exchange MDAX index of midcap stocks in September 2001. In the interim, Porsche shares (which still trade on the exchange) have risen 26 percent, while the MDAX has dropped 16 percent. “Who looks the fool now?” Wiedeking, 50, asked in January. “Deutsche Börse or us?”
That, it now seems, won’t be clear until the bourse and Porsche run a few more laps. Porsche is suing to be included in the exchange’s new Prime Standard sector, a collection of companies following especially high standards of corporate governance and transparency -- including quarterly reports. Porsche contends that German securities law precludes the exchange from barring companies from sectors because they don’t report quarterly. Nonsense, says the exchange. Given the pace of the German judicial system, Wiedeking may be idling his engine for a while.
