There is growing hope that the ailing real estate investor Adler will find an auditor for its annual financial statements for the past year after all.

The Berlin-Charlottenburg district court has appointed KPMG as auditor for the German subsidiary Adler Real Estate, the company announced on Monday evening. KPMG's auditors had refused to issue an audit certificate for the Adler Group's 2021 annual financial statements and were also unwilling to accept the mandate for 2022. All other major auditors had also declined. With the application to the local court for a court appointment, Adler had hoped that KPMG would then also take on the Luxembourg parent company.

However, it remains to be seen whether KPMG will now comply with the audit request. "The court appointment requires the acceptance of the audit mandate by KPMG AG," explained Adler Real Estate. It is not known whether KPMG will do this. However, an audited balance sheet is a prerequisite for the billion-euro loans that Adler has taken out. Adler had agreed with an important group of creditors that the annual financial statements for 2022 would not have to be presented until December 2023 and not by April as originally required.

(Report by Alexander Hübner. Edited by Olaf Brenner. If you have any questions, please contact our editorial team at berlin.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for politics and the economy) or frankfurt.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com (for companies and markets)).