Wirecard: new ruling by the Federal Court of Justice on 13 Nov 2025

On 13 Novem­ber 2025, the Fed­eral Court of Justice is­sued a rul­ing for all in­vestors who as­ser­ted claims for dam­ages against Wir­e­card AG in in­solv­ency pro­ceed­ings.

In pro­ceed­ings IX ZR 127/24, the IX Civil Sen­ate, which is re­spons­ible for in­solv­ency law, cla­ri­fied that share­hold­ers’ claims for dam­ages un­der cap­ital mar­ket law are not to be treated as simple in­solv­ency claims (sec­tion 38 InsO), but only as sub­or­din­ate claims. For you as a share­holder, this means that the claims as­ser­ted due to in­cor­rect or mis­lead­ing cap­ital mar­ket in­form­a­tion do not par­ti­cip­ate on an equal foot­ing in the dis­tri­bu­tion of the in­solv­ency es­tate in the in­solv­ency pro­ceed­ings, but only sub­or­din­ately or only within the frame­work of a pos­sible dis­tri­bu­tion of sur­plus (sec­tion 199 InsO). It is now clear that claims for dam­ages arising from the pur­chase of shares in an in­solv­ent com­pany are closely linked to the po­s­i­tion as a share­holder un­der in­solv­ency law and there­fore take a back seat to the claims of or­din­ary in­solv­ency creditors.

For you as a share­holder of Wir­e­card AG, this means that you will not re­ceive any quota from the in­solv­ency pro­ceed­ings of Wir­e­card AG. The quota would have been less than 5% any­way, as around €15.4 bil­lion had been re­gistered in the in­solv­ency table and the avail­able in­solv­ency es­tate amounts to only around €650 million.

The ques­tion of li­ab­il­ity for con­tent out­side the in­solv­ency pro­ceed­ings, in par­tic­u­lar on the part of EY, plays a de­cis­ive role in this re­spect, as the cur­rent rul­ing does not af­fect the ques­tion of EY’s li­ab­il­ity. On the con­trary: with the rul­ing of the Fed­eral Court of Justice, the on­go­ing KapMuG pro­ceed­ings take on de­cis­ive eco­nomic significance!

We have also pos­ted our we­binar from Novem­ber 24, 2025 on­line on the topic of Wirecard.