Oct 17 2008
Robert Hersov takes another financial knock
I published this story about Robert Hersov on my old blog on 1/8/2008. Yesterday he suffered another financial setback (or potential setback) in Germany. Read about his latest headace here, after you’ve read about his first one below.
For London-based Robert Hersov, member of the well-known Hersov family of Anglovaal fame in South Africa, the year 2008 is slowly turning into an annus horribilis as far as his business activities in Germany are concerned.
After pocketing a €30 million loss in April this year from an investment he had made in the German airline Air Berlin a short four months before, a Berlin court gave a ruling today which effectively forces Hersov to pocket another €18 million loss from a second, unrelated business deal.
The Berlin court case was about a deal involving 3 million shares in a German listed company called Curanum. (Hersov was ordered to fork out just over €29 million for shares only worth €11 million at close of trade today.) That brings his (realised and unrealised) losses in Germany this year to €48 million (about R570 million) – probably enough to give even a Hersov a sleepless night or two. Definitely enough to buy a handful of prime wine farms in the Boland.
And, to make matters worse, these deals were not really Hersov’s, but deals made by a “good friend”, the 31-year-old Lars Windhorst, a German with a long history of bad business deals in Germany. Hersov had appointed him to lead Vatas Holding, a subsidiary of Hersov’s UK-based investment vehicle Sapinda, which Hersov started in 1999, after completing a stint at Italian businessman-turned-politician Berlusconi’s media empire. And Vatas was the principle in both deals.
But, like with all good stories, this one also has a positive ending: Had Hersov not sold his Air Berlin stake in April, his loss would now have been double the realised €30 million.