Grange Castle based Grifols to take legal action after €2.3 billion wiped off market value following report

GLOBAL bio-pharma group Grifols is set to take legal action against a short-seller fund whose criticisms wiped €2.3bn off its market value.

Gotham City Research released a report accusing the Spanish company of artificially manipulating its earnings and debt via transactions with a company related to the Grifols family that controls it.

Grifols has a significant presence in Ireland, with over €300m invested here over the last 11 years, and a major manufacturing and supply hub in Grange Castle where it employs 300 people.

The company plans to increase the workforce in Grange Castle to 500.

Nine years ago Grifols, which employs about 14,000 people in total, announced it was moving its corporate treasury to Dublin from Barcelona. It means the company manages all its global payments, including taxes, from here.

At the time, Grifols insisted the move was not about tax engineering, but designed to take advantage of Ireland’s skilled workforce, legal stability, and convenient location between Europe and America. The company insisted the change would have no significant impact on the amount of tax it paid in the 30 countries where it does business.

Two years ago the company opened a new 17,000 sq m albumin purification and filling plant at its site in Grange Castle.

Grifols said it marked a milestone in the “continuing expansion of a site that plays an increasingly vital role in producing, packaging and distributing Grifols therapies worldwide.”

The company said this week it will seek compensation in court for the financial and reputational damage suffered as a result of the criticisms by New York-based Gotham. Its board expressed full support for CEO Thomas Glanzmann after Gotham also questioned his independence from the Grifols family.

While the company initially lost more than €2.3bn in value after the report, it recouped some of those paper losses in trading.