In a recent study, Oliver Berg of BTK Suchet Avocats analyzed the nature of losses suffered by shareholders who were victims of stock market breaches (O. Berg, Le préjudice résultant d’une fausse information boursière : une perte de chance subie par la masse des actionnaires [Damages resulting from false stock market information: a loss of opportunity suffered by the majority of shareholders], Mélanges Leduc, LexisNexis, 2025).
Shareholders may have suffered massive stock market losses in a case revealed by the German magazine SPIEGEL as part of an international journalistic investigation. According to this source, a subsidiary of the French company Wordline, the German company Payone, allegedly maintained, in a structural and prolonged manner, commercial relations with partners described as “high-risk customers,” particularly in the pornography and dating site sectors.
It is alleged that these partnerships may have constituted violations of legal obligations in the fight against money laundering, in particular the provisions of Directive (EU) 2015/849 (4th Anti-Money Laundering Directive) transposed into German law.
It is also alleged that, despite formal intervention by BaFin (the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) in the summer of 2023, certain payment flows from these customers continued to pass through other subsidiaries of the Worldline group, which could constitute an attempt to circumvent regulations, according to the internal documents cited. In response, on June 25, 2025, Worldline’s share price on the Paris stock exchange fell by 38%.
BTK Suchet Avocats has earned a strong reputation in investor protection by representing individual and institutional shareholders in major stock market misconduct cases (Paris, June 25, 2025).