Handelsblatt, 19 May 2026. Jakob Blume, Anja Müller
Allegations by a short seller overshadow the prosthetics manufacturer’s annual general meeting. Management is pushing back against the claims — but was unable to stop the share price slide.
Frankfurt, Düsseldorf. That the mood among shareholders at Ottobock’s annual general meeting would be anything but cheerful was foreseeable. After all, the share price of the company, listed since October 2025, has traded continuously below its issue price of €66 per share since mid-January.
But a report by short seller Grizzly Research, published on the morning of the shareholders’ meeting, definitively soured investors’ mood.
Ottobock shares lost as much as 14 per cent on Tuesday and eventually closed the session down almost 11 per cent.
“What is happening here is a nightmare for shareholders,” commented Marc Tüngler, managing director of the Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertpapierbesitz (DSW), Germany’s leading association for private investors.
What particularly concerns him: in recent days and weeks, Ottobock had been unable to shore up its faltering share price even with positive news such as strategic acquisitions. And now a critical investor report has triggered an outright sell-off.
Grizzly Research, an analysis firm known as a short seller, had published a critical report on Ottobock in which it criticises the medical technology manufacturer’s financing and accounting practices as well as its Russia business. By its own account, Grizzly is betting on a decline in Ottobock’s share price and values the stock at €30.
Chief executive Oliver Jakobi rejected the allegations — insofar as they concern Ottobock itself — at Tuesday’s virtual annual general meeting. Much of the report, he said, was not new. It also contained “numerous speculative claims and misleading conclusions.”
The wider public was excluded from the shareholders’ question-and-answer session.
Continued business in Russia
Investor circles confirmed to Handelsblatt that shareholders were preoccupied above all by the controversial Russia business, which Grizzly also denounced in its report. According to the IPO prospectus, Ottobock generated 8.8 per cent of its revenue in Russia in the first half of 2025.
Drawing on publicly available export data, the short seller concludes that Russia is the prosthetics manufacturer’s second-most-important export market after India — and estimates that the earnings contribution of the Russia business could be significantly higher than publicly known.
The company, for its part, says Grizzly’s report contains “distorted representations of the share of Ottobock’s business in Russia.”
The company is unequivocal: “Our activities in Russia are entirely focused on civilian care for the population and comply with all applicable European Union sanctions regulations.” Management repeated this like a mantra at the annual general meeting, shareholder advocate Tüngler confirmed. Yet important questions remained largely unanswered.
KPMG conducted the audit
For instance: how does Ottobock manage to transfer the earnings from its Russia business back to Germany? How can management in Germany ensure control over the subsidiaries in Russia and their employees?
And how could KPMG, as auditor, verify the Russian figures without maintaining a local presence? With regard to its Russia business, Ottobock assures that the company “has comprehensive compliance processes in place and has obtained all necessary regulatory approvals.”
The heavy debt load of majority shareholder Georg Näder is also weighing on shareholder advocates and investors. Näder had bought back a minority stake in Ottobock from financial investor EQT, taking on substantial debt to do so. According to Grizzly’s estimates, the entrepreneur could have to repay loans and maturing interest totalling more than €2 billion by 2030.
“Ottobock is the only identifiable profitable asset with which the growing liabilities can be serviced,” the short-seller report states. The company rejects this: “Ottobock is independent of the personal financial situation of its individual shareholders, both in its business activities and in its financing.”
But shareholder advocate Tüngler also criticises: “The potential selling pressure from Mr Näder is a dark cloud hanging over the stock.” All these issues, he says, make the prosthetics manufacturer susceptible to short-seller attacks — regardless of their substance.
He demands that Ottobock must now regain “command of the air” over its own shares. The only way to do so, he argues, is maximum transparency on every point of criticism.