Shares in Aurubis plummeted 17 percent in morning trading in Frankfurt, the company’s biggest one-day fall since 2015, after Europe’s largest copper producer said it had been the target of a huge theft that could lead to hundreds of millions of euros of losses, Report informs referring to the Financial Times.
The German copper company announced that it would fall short of its full-year financial target after it had identified discrepancies in stockpiles and shipments of metal tied to its recycling business in Hamburg. It concluded that it had been a target of “criminal activity.”
The company, which produces about 1.1 million tons of copper sheets a year, said that its findings of “serious indications of shortfalls in metal” had led it to involve Germany’s State Office of Criminal Investigation.