jakeflyer

Funds ramp up Porsche case
By Daniel Schäfer in Frankfurt
from FT.com---- england
Published: February 15 2009 23:37 | Last updated: February 15 2009 23:37

Hedge funds have gained more ammunition for their legal complaints against Porsche after the German sports carmaker revealed it had made almost €400m ($514m)by placing bets on several German blue-chip shares, in addition to last year’s controversial trades in Volkswagen options.

Holger Härter, Porsche’s chief financial officer, recently said Porsche gained €392m in liquidity in its fiscal year 2007/08 from option trades of companies in the Dax, the German blue-chip index.

and,--- revenues fell 15% in last 4 months.-- Given the dire situation in the World economy, maybe not too bad.

and, --- Problems with value of Scania may get Porsche more ownership

rusnak

Porsche drove a (few?) hedge funds over the edge, and probably more than a few traders with it's move. The profits are old news. My understanding was that it's not strictly illegal but frowned upon.

jakeflyer

Given the current news (and huge lack of information) re: many US traders and the off book scary betting with a lever long enough to lift the world------ I have no critical words for Porsche. My post was more in appreciation of a car company that has a productive money unit. Unique and worthy of a "good show". With the smarts in being up-side in this market, it shows that Porsche does have some bright lads. They can design my car anytime.

VTCMart

Now Jeremy Clarkson's comments about hedge funds and Porsche on the Top Gear season premiere make sense, I had not heard about that. Beautiful GT2 on the premiere as well.

rusnak

one of the things that Porsche told VW shareholders upon the initial acquisition was that Porsche could assist VW with taking better advantage of currency fluctuations. Apparently Porsche has some really good in house software programming, and they had turned that power toward studying aspects of foreign currencies. Looks like they are a very entreprenuerial company.

Edgy01

Basically, this confirms that Porsche reports they made more money in the monetary markets than producing cars. More power to them! Anything to keep them producing cars!!

Trader220

The highway is littered with companies whose main focus were not the global capital markets and started "trading" which yielded huge profits for a while but in the end cost them dearly.


In the early 1990’s Proctor and Gamble was one of the biggest traders of Foreign Currency Options and they had their own huge trading desk. All was well and good while they were making a fortune. Then a funny thing happened, they lost it all and then some, and all of a sudden the Board had to explain to shareholders why they had a huge FX Options desk and why it took such a bite out of the company. There are hundreds of like stories.

Porsche is an interesting company but they’re an auto manufacturer, design and engineering firm not a bank and not a trading house.

logan2z

Beautiful indeed. I wonder how badly it really did beat the Gallardo around their test track?

vinceqn

I never knew Porsche was so diverse. More power to em.