YLine

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
YLine Internet Business Services AG
legal form AG
founding 1998
resolution September 25, 2001
Reason for dissolution insolvency
Seat Vienna
management Werner Boehm
Number of employees 230
sales EUR 34 million (1999)
Branch Internet provider , holding company

The YLine Internet Business Services AG was a Austrian company as Internet providers occurred.

history

Foundation and IPO

The company was founded in 1998 and became an Austrian symbol of the new economy bubble in the course of its IPO on EASDAQ in 1999. The share of YLine, for which Lehman Brothers stated a price target of € 400, reached its high of € 278 in March 2000 despite low sales. Proximity of people around the company to the FPÖ is rated as beneficial for the rise of YLine. According to his statements, the company founder Werner Böhm was offered the office of Minister of Infrastructure by Susanne Riess-Passer in 2000 . In March 2000, YLine submitted a takeover offer to the Republic of Austria as the owner of Telekom Austria for the Internet division of Telekom. YLine offered a purchase price of 2 billion schillings, which should have been paid in YLine shares. YLine acquired numerous smaller companies by bringing them into YLine as contributions in kind. The company paid inflated prices for these takeovers with YLine shares. For a provider of pornography on the Internet, YLine paid € 1.5 million in March 2000 to a depositor who had acquired the company for € 174,000 a month earlier. In December 2000, a planned merger between YLine and the software company Beko failed. At the end of the 2000 financial year, YLine generated losses of € 37.715 million; the losses had tripled compared to 1999 and exceeded sales of € 34.125 million.

insolvency

As an ultimately non-economic growth concept, YLine pushed the sale of computers including Internet access. To this end, YLine acquired 30,000 computers from IBM in 2000 for a total value of € 30 million. The deal was arranged by an IBM employee and founding shareholder of YLine. While the computers were sold to customers far below their value, the acquisition of the same from IBM represented a heavy financial burden for the company. With the spin-off of the computer business to a subsidiary, YLine lost one of its last sources of income with the monthly fees of the customers. As a result of a conflict, IBM discontinued its cooperation with YLine in August 2001, and at the end of August, IBM and YLine agreed that it would immediately forward all incoming payments to IBM to settle outstanding claims. Due to the conflict with IBM, the publication of a balance sheet for the 2nd quarter 2001 was postponed to September 17th. On September 17, the Vienna Stock Exchange suspended trading in the YLine share, the purchase of which Lehman Brothers had recommended until June 2001, after the company did not publish a quarterly balance sheet on September 17 and the price rose 48% to € 0.46 sank. On September 25, 2001, YLine filed for bankruptcy. The company, which has 230 employees, initially stated that liabilities in the amount of € 20.2 million, of which € 13.6 million were accounted for by IBM's receivables, were largely tied up assets of € 46.1 million, of which € 30.9 million in subsidiaries.

The activity of the asset manager concentrated on the reconstruction of cash flows in the vicinity of the company, initially the use of the funds raised by the IPO remained unclear. Since the FPÖ had not paid for services from YLine between January and September 2001, the trustee sued them for payment of € 436,000. As part of a settlement, the FPÖ paid € 580,000 to the crowd in 2007. The insolvency proceedings were concluded in 2011 with a rate of 35.2%. In addition to the settlement with the FPÖ, funds for the satisfaction of creditors' interests were obtained from the liabilities of contributors in kind and contestations of payments made before the bankruptcy.

Criminal law processing

In September 2002, the trustee submitted a statement of the facts to the Vienna Public Prosecutor's Office, in which he stated: "Sales have been generated artificially which were not matched by a corresponding cash flow." . Furthermore, it was not the purpose of the company "to earn money, but (...) to ensure suitable financing of current expenses by raising equity on the capital market" . The trustee assumed that over-indebtedness had occurred by the end of 2000 at the latest. The economic police began investigations into the falsification of the balance sheet and the delay in bankruptcy suspected by the trustee. An auditor found that Yline had not shown a liquidity bottleneck in the balance sheet as early as September 2000.

In 2003, the economic police directed their investigations against 18 people, including CEO Werner Böhm, who had meanwhile acted as a consultant for companies threatened with bankruptcy. At the end of 2003, evidence of false sales in the YLine balance sheets became known. In 2000, YLine sold licenses for the "Ares" marketing idea, which was issued as software, to its German subsidiary Proofit M-Commerce AG . A few days before the purchase price of € 1.8 million was paid, the subsidiary received a shareholder contribution of € 1.8 million from YLine. By paying for the marketing idea, the money flowed back to YLine. A report by Ernst & Young to the YLine board of directors criticized the license purchase by Proofit in May 2001, as no benefit for Proofit could be determined.

An expert opinion on behalf of the trustee came to the conclusion that the acquisition of companies at overpriced prices caused damage to YLine of at least € 36 million. The behavior of Ernst & Young, which was accused of having supported both the enrichment of insiders and the pretense of a higher company value, also came under fire. A pornographic website was valued by Ernst & Young when it was acquired by YLine, despite a lack of assets and an annual loss of € 500,000, at € 3.2 - 2.4 million, the seller who identified himself as a "handyman" during a police questioning had sold the shares paid out to him half of their value to a Liechtenstein foundation, which sold them at the height of the bubble itself. In January 2006, the media reported that a trial against several people from the corporate management environment was planned for the middle of the year. Changes in the judiciary delayed the proceedings. The indictment was finalized in December 2012.

In April 2014, the trial began against 12 former members of the management team who are accused by the public prosecutor of embezzlement, serious fraud, falsification of accounts, grossly negligent impairment of creditors' interests, fraudulent crime and insider trading. On December 17, Böhm was acquitted. The judge justified the verdict by stating that the mistakes made by the company management "can be justified in the course of normal business with entrepreneurial risk" . Böhm has to pay the court procedural costs of € 7,000.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Eric Frey : A gold digger from the prehistoric times of the Internet , Der Standard, April 23, 2014
  2. ↑ a b c YLine process: “More appearance than being” , ORF Vienna, April 23, 2014
  3. ↑ a b c d The Neverending Story of Yline , Die Presse, April 23, 2014
  4. ↑ YLine wants to take over AON , Futurezone, March 2000
  5. ↑ Format : FORMAT: Internet newcomer YLine wants to take over the provider A-Online , APA OTS, March 19, 2000.
  6. ↑ The hunt for backers in the YLine crime thriller , Der Standard, February 24, 2008
  7. ↑ a b Causa Yline: Evidence stolen , Der Standard, March 9, 2004
  8. ↑ Beko & YLine: Fusion burst , Der Standard, December 15, 2001
  9. ↑ a b YLine will no longer receive any money from debtors , Wiener Zeitung, August 27, 2001
  10. ↑ Volker H. Peemöller, Stefan Hofmann: Accounting scandals: offenses and countermeasures. Erich Schmidt Verlag: 2005, p. 70.
  11. ↑ Growth kink at YLine , Wiener Zeitung, August 6, 2001
  12. ^ YLine postpones publication of second quarter results , Wiener Zeitung, September 3, 2001
  13. ^ Regulators suspend trading of YLine , Wiener Zeitung, September 17, 2001
  14. ↑ a b YLine bankruptcy: liquidation or continued operation , Die Presse, September 26, 2001
  15. ^ YLine reports liabilities of ATS 300 million , Wiener Zeitung, September 20, 2001
  16. ^ FPÖ according to the trustee YLine-Hauptschuldner , Der Standard, January 14, 2001
  17. ↑ Trustee sued the FPÖ , February 25, 2002
  18. ↑ Yline bankruptcy: Freedom Party pays 580,000 euros , Der Standard, June 19 of 2007.
  19. ↑ Yline Bankruptcy ten years before completion , the press 28 June, 2006
  20. ↑ a b YLine bankruptcy becomes a case for the public prosecutor , Der Standard, September 2, 2002.
  21. ↑ Yline is the case for the economic police , 26 November 2002
  22. ^ YLine bankruptcy becomes a case for the public prosecutor , Der Standard, September 2, 2002
  23. ^ IT-Pleitier Böhm is back , Der Standard, February 25, 2002
  24. ↑ Yline bankruptcy - investigations against 18 persons ( Memento of 24 April 2014 Web archive archive.today ) format, 6 March 2003
  25. ↑ a b Signs of a balance sheet scandal at YLine , December 9, 2003
  26. ↑ Volker H. Peemöller, Stefan Hofmann: Accounting scandals: offenses and countermeasures. Erich Schmidt Verlag: 2005, pp. 69–70.
  27. ^ Sharp criticism of Ernst & Young , March 5, 2004
  28. ↑ YLine: Millionaire Deal with Porn Website , Die Presse, February 28, 2004
  29. ↑ The Yline Scandal is Ready for Prosecution , Der Standard, January 26, 2006
  30. ^ Affaires: The Discovery of Slowness , Die Presse, September 19, 2008
  31. ↑ Yline process: "Keeping Up Appearances" , Der Standard, April 23, 2014
  32. ↑ Yline process ends after 14 years in acquittals , The Standard, December 17, 2015