Wirecard's Markus Braun: schmoozing the elite with tech twaddle

Markus Braun, the self-styled tech visionary behind failed German tech firm Wirecard, was adept at fooling the gullible. There were red flags from the start, says Jane Lewis.

Markus Braun of Wirecard © Bloomberg via Getty Images
© Getty
(Image credit: Markus Braun of Wirecard © Bloomberg via Getty Images)

In April this year, after KPMG delivered a highly critical report of Wirecard’s accounting, Markus Braun “visibly glowered with barely contained rage” at a recorded company town-hall meeting, says the Financial Times. It was “a rare show of emotion” from the self-styled “tech visionary” behind the German payments processing firm. Braun’s arrest last week, following the uncovering of a vast fraud, “is a brutal fall from grace for a once-fêted executive”, says The Economist. After taking the helm in 2002, the former KPMG management consultant transformed the start-up into a pioneer of digital payments – eventually persuading everyone from Germany’s financial establishment to Silicon Valley (by way of SoftBank’s boss, Masayoshi Son, who invested €900m last year) to believe in his company’s “amazing growth story”.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.