Shares in Aurubis, plummeted 17 per cent 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.
The German copper company announced late on Thursday 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 1.1mn tonnes 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.