"IAM NOT Scrooge McDuck," said Oliver Samwer in 2017 when he denied the request of shareholders of Rocket Internet, the startup incubator he co-founded with his two brothers, to use the company's cash to boost its ailing share price through share buy-backs. Now the way he has handled a planned delisting of Rocket from stock exchanges in Frankfurt and Luxembourg reminds those same shareholders of Walt Disney's money-hoarding cartoon character. Those who put money into Rocket's initial public offering (IPO) in 2014 may end up with a hefty loss. "It is totally legal and totally immoral," says Michael Kunert of SDK, an association which defends investors' rights, about the planned delisting of Rocket, expected to be rubber-stamped at the firm's extraordinary general meeting on September 24th, after The Economist went to press. Rather than using external capital to buy investors out at a premium, the usual way to take a firm private, Mr Samwer has used company cash to buy back €223m ($260m) of its own shares. This pushed his clan's stake to over 50%. He plans to use another €1bn of Rocket's cash to buy out minority shareholders at €18.57 a share, the volume-weighted average price in the past six months but down from the IPO price of €42.50.
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