The dispute between the highly acclaimed used car startup Auto1 and Auto1 FT is burdening the business.
For the first time, the main owner of fintech, Bensen Safa, comments. The financial professional is harshly criticizing Auto1 boss Hakan Koç.
New cooperations with banks are expected to boost the lending business shortly.
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After the corona pandemic also paralyzed the used car market for months, the industry seems to have bottomed out. “We will start financing again next week,” says Auto1 Fintech GmbH CEO Taimur Andre Rashid. It remains to be seen whether trading will start again. The announcement falls in the middle of a shareholder dispute over the business model of the young company.
The Auto1 Group (Wirkaufendeinauto.de) founded the Fintech subsidiary more than two years ago, but soon gave the majority to investors such as Deutsche Bank, Allianz or the Cypriot financial professional Bensen Safa. After an initial hype, the disillusionment came. Because the millions of capital ran through the managers’ fingers without any countable success. There are two versions of the reasons today: Auto1 boss Hakan Koç allegedly believes that the Auto1 FT business model has failed and has written off the investment without much melancholy. Failure is part of the business, so the reading.
Safa, who is now the main owner of fintech and has so far remained in the background, sees it completely differently. In conversation with Business Insider, he now spoke for the first time publicly about the dispute with the Auto1 boss. “Koç is a good entrepreneur, but he’s not a finance man. He is primarily a car dealer, ”says Safa. “If we treat Auto1 FT like a bank, the company will also make a lot of money. If Auto1 FT is misused to increase Auto1’s sales at any price, the business model will fail. ”
Safa is only 47 years old, but claims to have been in the financial business for 30 years. “I have a bank license,” says the gray-haired man. “I like the financial business, so Auto1 FT is an attractive option for me.” In his eyes, Koç lost faith in fintech “because his people couldn’t do it.” For a long time, the management lacked the expertise. “We changed that,” said Safa.
Nevertheless, the success story depends largely on the partnership between Auto1 and Auto1 FT. In the dispute, however, Koç had extraordinarily terminated the contract between the companies last March. “Koç is very emotional, but it’s business,” says Safa. “We have a contract with Auto1 and from our point of view it is still valid for 18 years.”
In order to build up pressure against the Auto1 Group, Safa is fighting with hard bandages. So he commissioned an auditing company to examine the work of Koç and Co. in the early days of Auto1 FT. Koç rejected the allegations that have so far been brought to light. Safa: “At Auto1 FT, money was burned for a long time and the shareholders were poorly informed. So I wanted to know what happened in the past. ”
As for the future. the man living in Dubai is optimistic. With its fresh millions, the company can now develop step by step. One already has “an outstanding technology at Auto1 FT,” says Safa. An essential component is the newly developed dealer portal, which would extremely simplify and automate the lending business with customers. According to Auto1 FT, anonymous surveys have shown that the vast majority are satisfied with the opportunities offered by the new dealer portal.
“Every bank is enthusiastic about this business,” says Safa. It fits that, according to information from Business Insider, draft contracts have already been drawn up between Auto1 FT and a renowned bank. On request, managing director Rashid only says: “We are confident that we will soon be able to announce interesting cooperations with banks that will further develop our business.”
Wirecard was originally intended for this role. Like Wirecard, Auto1 is one of the investments of the Japanese tech giant Softbank. A partnership was therefore an option, but at the latest with the Wirecard balance sheet scandal.
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