This year’s Volkswagen’s April fools may bring some huge problems for the company. In the end of March the US department of an automaker changed its logos and name to Voltswagen in social media and on the official website, and the official press-release about the rebranding leaked soon. However, according to Der Spiegel, the US SEC started the investigation, suspecting that VW manipulated its stock price.
Many media sources trusted VW, making a huge hype on what later turned out to be a joke. Though, it resulted VW’s stock to rise 12.5% during the days when rebranding to Voltswagen might have been taken seriously. When the automaker confirmed that was a joke, the stock went back down.
So far we can’t say that will be the SEC’s penalty for such joke. Usually the commission goes with quite high fines for companies breaking the US financial laws.
