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Porsche wins legal battle over failed takeover

German sportscar maker Porsche said Friday a US court has thrown out a lawsuit brought by US hedge funds claiming more than two billion dollars in damages over its failed 2008 attempt to acquire Volkswagen.

Published: 31 December 2010 11:41 CET
Porsche wins legal battle over failed takeover
Photo: DPA

The US District Court for the Southern District of New York granted Thursday Porsche’s motion to dismiss the complaints in the Elliott Associates and Black Diamond actions in their entirety, Porsche said in a statement.

A total of 39 plaintiffs had accused Porsche of not coming clean about its intention in 2008 to acquire VW, Germany and Europe’s biggest automaker, and of having manipulated the market.

Porsche caught investors by surprise in October 2008 when it said it had built up a 75-percent stake in VW, causing violent swings in VW’s share price and at one point making it the world’s biggest company by market value.

Speculators, including hedge funds, who had bet VW shares would fall were forced to cover their positions at enormous cost.

Porsche was later caught out by the global economic crisis and ended up abandoning its bid for VW, which turned the tables last year and bought nearly half of Porsche’s equity. VW plans to acquire the rest by 2011.

The plaintiffs have 30 days to file an appeal, the German firm added.

AFP/bk

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French court orders Twitter to reveal anti-hate speech efforts

A French court has ordered Twitter to give activists full access to all its documents relating to efforts to combat racism, sexism and other forms of hate speech on the social network.

Published: 7 July 2021 10:03 CEST
French court orders Twitter to reveal anti-hate speech efforts
Photo: Alastair Pike | AFP

Six anti-discrimination groups had taken Twitter to court in France last year, accusing the US social media giant of “long-term and persistent” failures in blocking hateful comments from the site.

The Paris court ordered Twitter to grant the campaign groups full access to all documents relating to the company’s efforts to combat hate speech since May 2020. The ruling applies to Twitter’s global operation, not just France.

Twitter must hand over “all administrative, contractual, technical or commercial documents” detailing the resources it has assigned to fighting homophobic, racist and sexist discourse on the site, as well as “condoning crimes against humanity”.

The San Francisco-based company was given two months to comply with the ruling, which also said it must reveal how many moderators it employs in France to examine posts flagged as hateful, and data on the posts they process.

The ruling was welcomed by the Union of French Jewish Students (UEJF), one of the groups that had taken the social media giant to court.

“Twitter will finally have to take responsibility, stop equivocating and put ethics before profit and international expansion,” the UEJF said in a statement on its website.

Twitter’s hateful conduct policy bans users from promoting violence, or threatening or attacking people based on their race, religion, gender identity or disability, among other forms of discrimination.

Like other social media businesses it allows users to report posts they believe are hateful, and employs moderators to vet the content.

But anti-discrimination groups have long complained that holes in the policy allow hateful comments to stay online in many cases.

French prosecutors on Tuesday said they have opened an investigation into a wave of racist comments posted on Twitter aimed at members of the country’s national football team.

The comments, notably targeting Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappe, were posted after France was eliminated from the Euro 2020 tournament last week.

France has also been having a wider public debate over how to balance the right to free speech with preventing hate speech, in the wake of the controversial case of a teenager known as Mila.

The 18-year-old sparked a furore last year when her videos, criticising Islam in vulgar terms, went viral on social media.

Thirteen people are on trial accused of subjecting her to such vicious harassment that she was forced to leave school and was placed under police protection.

While President Emmanuel Macron is among those who have defended her right to blaspheme, left-wing critics say her original remarks amounted to hate speech against Muslims.

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