Rocket Internet’s Controversial Loan Practices: From Wirecard CEO to Startup Investments

For years, Rocket Internet has made a name for itself by building and financing startups. Then CEO Oliver Samwer converted the company into a kind of asset manager. Rocket Internet now not only invests in real estate, but also grants loans on a large scale – sometimes at high interest rates.

At 2:39 p.m. on the day of the collapse, the Wirecard boss received a message from Oliver Samwer – and the Rocket Internet boss was in no mood for jokes. He wants to speak in 30 minutes. “We can do it with or without lawyers,” he writes, according to the Handelsblattwhich reconstructed June 18, 2020.

At the end of the day, the Dax group Wirecard has to admit that there is no evidence of billions of dollars in the Philippines. After the news becomes known, the price of the payment service provider on the stock exchanges collapses massively. In the middle of this chaos, the CEO also received news from Samwer. The background: The Rocket boss had loaned Braun around 75 million euros just a month earlier. And now he wants his money back. And quickly.

The news of the loan to the Wirecard boss spread in the wake of the Wirecard scandal, and the emails were made public. What is less well known: It is not the only loan that Rocket Internet has granted. In recent years, the former startup factory has lent tens of millions of euros at sometimes high interest rates – and Markus Braun is by no means the only prominent name on the list.

Millions in loan to Angermayer’s Apeiron Group

According to information at the most recent general meeting in June, Rocket also granted a loan to the Apeiron Investment Group – at an interest rate of 15 percent. The €35 million loan is said to be one of the ten largest long-term assets. This emerges from a transcript of the general meeting that is available to the editorial team. Behind Apeiron is one of the most dazzling but also controversial minds in the German startup scene: Christian Angermayer.

The German enjoys a rather dubious reputation due to various investments. He took the company Atai Life Sciences, which specializes in psychedelic substances, public. However, the company subsequently lost more than 90 percent of its value. There was opposition to his involvement with Northern Data a criminal complaint from the financial regulator Bafin because of market manipulation. However, no proceedings were then opened.

And Christian Angermayer is also said to have been involved at Wirecard. He allegedly brokered an investment from the Japanese technology group Softbank to the payment service provider – which brings the circle to Markus Braun full circle again. Neither Apeiron nor Oliver Samwer responded to a request.

Companies from Alexander Samwer’s portfolio also received money

Pelion Green Future Gamma, Pacifico Development and Linus are also three company names on the list in which Oliver Samwer’s younger brother Alexander is indirectly involved. This has been concentrating for some time on, among other things, businesses in the areas of renewable energies (Pelion/Pacifico) and real estate (Linus).

Rocket has lent a total of more than 50 million euros to Pelion and Pacifico alone – as of the end of last year. Linus, in turn, received a loan of two million euros. According to information at the general meeting, the company is said to be in arrears with some of the payments. Linus recently got into crisis (Finance Forward reported). Linus left an inquiry about the loans unanswered, as did Alexander Samwer.

Lucrative income

The loan business has become a very lucrative source of income for Rocket Internet. The interest on the loans alone generated high income last year. The Manager Magazine had already reported a few years ago that Rocket Internet had founded a subsidiary in Great Britain under the name “Global Growth Capital” that was supposed to grant high-interest loans to startups (venture debt). According to Spiegel, the loan to Braun also went through the company.

Investors are convinced that the loans will generate high income for Rocket Internet in the coming years. “We suspect that a few hundred million will still be credited to Rocket, so there could easily be another round of dividends,” says Georg Issels, board member of the Cologne investment company Scherzer, in the podcast “OMR Rabbit Hole”, for example tells the story of the Samwer brothers and also deals with the brothers’ credit transactions.

All episodes of the “OMR Rabbit Hole” podcast about the story of the Samwer brothers you can find it here.