Ottobock owner Hans Georg Näder has spent tens of thousands of euros on a public relations firm to remove information about Ottobock’s regulatory and financial violations and embarrassing details about his love life and irrational managerial style.
Näder has hired Finsbury Glover Hering, a public relations crisis management firm favoured by corrupt Russian oligarchs seeking to launder their reputation in the West, to delete Wikipedia mentions of Ottobock’s repeated failures to go public since 2015 and grave regulatory and financial violations of the company in the prosthetics market thanks to Näder’s iron-like grip over the company’s management and strategic direction.
On 9 May 2022, just weeks before Näder fired the management board and called off the IPO, Finsbury Glover Hering attempted to delete negative information about the company’s controversial activities under Näder’s leadership from Ottobock’s Wikipedia page.
Information deleted by Finsbury Glover Hering in May 2022
Ottobock’s Wikipedia page detailed a series of controversies that Ottobock has been involved under the leadership and ownership of Näder, all of which were removed by Finsbury Glover Hering and its army of paid-for editors.
In 2020, an Ottobock was fined by Russian authorities for participating in cartel collusion that gave the company and other conspirators a monopoly over prosthetics government contracts worth nearly 3 million euros.
In 2019, Ottobock was forced to divest all the assets that it acquired in September 2017 via its acquisition of industry competitor Freedom Innovations LLC after losing a lawsuit to the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The US government successfully argued that the acquisition was illegal as it violated competition laws, causing a loss of 78.1 million euros to Ottobock.
In 2016, Ottobock was banned from parts of Bosnia after an investigation by local media showed the company misused public health funds and was involved in a scheme to force disabled individuals to purchase products from Ottobock.
In August 2013, Ottobock was sued by prosthetic limb users for abusing their products’ prescription status to keep the prices for repair artificially high.
The PR firm also deleted any mentions of Näder’s years-long failed campaign to take Ottobock public, initially planning for an IPO in 2015. In May 2022, just weeks after the paid-for changes on Ottobock’s Wikipedia page, Näder mass-fired industry-respected Ottobock executives brought in to oversee the IPO and announced the indefinite end of the company’s future as a publicly-listed company.
Näder’s paid-for Wikipedia editors removed evidence of his financial mismanagement of Ottobock
Näder’s campaign to scrub the Internet from any unfavourable information began in late 2021 when Näder still hoped to get his embattled business on the Frankfurt stock exchange. Näder-paid editors then vandalised Ottobock’s Wikipedia page, deleting overnight information about the company’s activities and hiding critical information from prospective investors in the company.
Key information removed from Ottobock’s Wikipedia page concerned Näder’s financial mismanagement of the company and using the company’s funds without regard for other shareholders or the company’s financial state.
Ottobock’s financial performance declined through 2018 after Näder took on his role as the chairman of the board. Näder withdrew 40 million euros in dividends in 2018 despite the company posting losses totalling 107 million euros.
In the past ten years, Näder withdrew about half a billion euros from the company, sparking concerns by Ottobock’s advisory board. An Ottobock subsidiary, meanwhile, took out a bank loan of around half a billion euros in 2017.
Näder used the withdrawn money to fund his lavish lifestyle, including purchasing the Pink Gin VI yacht, using private jets, and other personal vanity projects such as the 24,000 square meter former Botzow brewery in Berlin. In 2014, he purchased a hotel in Rio de Janeiro and acquired four land plots spanning 22,675 square feet in Brooklyn.
Näder’s campaign also deleted details about Ottobock being sued in 2013 by prosthetic limb users for abusing their products’ prescription status to keep the repair prices artificially high. Ottobock also settled with direct foam buyers for an undisclosed sum after participating in a price-fixing conspiracy between January 1999 and 2009. Other co-conspirators of Ottobock settled for 275 million dollars in 2015.
Näder’s long-running reputation laundering campaign extends to his personal Wikipedia page
Näder utilised paid-for Wikipedia editors to remove embarrassing information about his personal life and managerial style.
In March 2022, for instance, these editors deleted a paragraph from his personal Wikipedia page which described his management style as “very authoritarian,” adding that insiders describe him as “difficult to deal with and also resistant to advice.”
Recently, Nader also amended his page to remove the 30-year age difference between himself and his former fiancée Natalie Scheil. Their short-lived relationship ended as quickly as it began after Scheil was caught being unfaithful to Nader in his own home shortly before their planned wedding.
Finsbury Glover Hering favoured by sanctioned Russian oligarchs
This was not the first time Finsbury Glover Hering came to the rescue of an embattled tycoon amid a planned public listing of a company.
In 2012, the PR company was caught deleting information from the Wikipedia page of Uzbekistan-born Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov, sanctioned by the European Union earlier this year over his ties to the Kremlin following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Finsbury Glover Hering was hired amid the public listing of Usmanov’s mobile phone company on the London stock exchange.
Over 15 now-banned Wikipedia accounts controlled by Finsbury Glover Hering edited Usmanov’s page, including deleting a reference to the oligarch’s criminal record in Russia. Finsbury Glover Hering cut ties with Usmanov in March 2022 amid the sanctions. The Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) issued a statement in 2012 slamming Finsbury Glover Hering for providing Wikipedia editing services to Usmanov, stating that “public relations professionals should not directly edit Wikipedia for a client or employer.”
Finsbury Glover Hering also worked for Andrei Skoch, one of the wealthiest people in Russian politics, valued at 6.6 billion dollars, to remove images of his yacht from another website.