Spanish Grifols sinks on the stock market due to accusations of accounting manipulation

The action of pharmaceutical laboratory Grifols, specialized in blood products, collapsed this Tuesday in bag after being accused of accounting manipulation by the American fund Gotham City Research.

The price of the pharmaceutical giant, present in 110 countries and whose market capitalization reached almost 8.7 billion euros (about US$ 9.5 billion) on Monday afternoon, lost 26% on the Madrid Stock Exchange during the day, although at one point It lost more than 40% of its value.

This fall occurred after the publication of a report by Gotham City Research, a fund specialized in short sales in financial markets, which reported deficiencies in the financial information published by the Spanish group.

In the document, the US fund accuses Grifols of having manipulated “your declared debt” as well as his “ebitda” (operating profit) for “artificially reduce” its ratio of indebtedness.

The fund states that Grifols consolidated in its accounts the results of two companies, Haema and BPC Plasma, although it does not have a stake in them and the results of both are already integrated into those of Grifols’ subsidiary, Scranton Enterprises.

Grifols denied the accusations in a statement, in which it stated that it had always shown “integrity” in your accounts.

“As a company committed to transparency, integrity and ethical conduct, we categorically deny and reject any accusation of accounting practices or erroneous reporting of our consolidated financial statements,” he pointed

Given the fall in the Grifols stock market, the Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, asked “prudence” and wait for the reviews of the National Commission of the Stock marketthe Spanish stock market regulator.

Created in 1940 in Barcelona by Dr. José Antonio Grífols and his two sons, the company began its activity as a blood analysis and transfusion laboratory before specializing in products derived from blood plasma.

The group, led until December by Víctor Grífols, grandson of the company’s founder and architect of the group’s internationalization in recent years, registered more than 6,000 million euros (US$ 6,500 million) in turnover in 2022.