The Swede Ilija Batljan founded the real estate company Samhällsbyggnadsbolaget (SBB) in 2016. It claims to be one of Sweden’s biggest real estate companies, listed on Nasdaq First North. Batljan is the company’s CEO and came under pressure after another report by Wirecard hunter Fraser Perring and his Viceroy Research uncovered irregularities in the company’s cash. In part, SBB had to admit to the allegations. A battle between Perring and Batlja is currently taking place on Twitter.
SBB shares have fallen from around SEK 26 to around SEK 12 since the beginning of June 2022. How much of this can be attributed to the Viceroy report published in June 2022 and how much to the generally depressed economic situation and the real estate sector severely affected by the Ukraine war is difficult to determine.
In his latest tweet, Fraser Perring, the Grand Poobah of “criminal” shorts, accuses Batljan of massively leveraging SBB and misleading the market:
Fraser Perring is unlikely to win a popularity contest in this lifetime. But that is certainly not important to the short seller. He hunts with a great passion for listed companies like Wirecard where he can prove irregularities or illegal actions. In doing so, he is betting that share prices will collapse after his published reports on them and that he will earn a lot of money as a short seller.
Like recently with the fintech Wirecard or the German real estate company Adler Group. It has been shown that the Viceroy reports were correct in their substance. In this respect, it can be assumed that Fraser Perring is also correct about SBB. This is bad news for Ilija Batljan.
