BERLIN, Oct. 15 (Xinhua) -- German stocks were almost unchanged at the start of trading on Tuesday, with the benchmark DAX index losing by 17.78 points, or 0.14 percent, opening at 12,468.78 points.
Following a report by the British newspaper Financial Times about fraudulent accounting practices at Wirecard, shares of the German financial service provider plummeted by more than 20 percent shortly after trading opened on Tuesday.
The Financial Times published internal documents and correspondences between "senior members of Wirecard's finance team" and reported that the Wirecard had fraudulently inflated sales and profits in Dubai and Ireland.
The biggest winner among Germany's largest 30 companies at the start of trading was postal company Deutsche Post, increasing 0.81 percent, followed by the insurance company Allianz with 0.77 percent and the airline Lufthansa with 0.71 percent.
The euro increased by 0.13 percent on Tuesday morning local time, trading at 1.1041 U.S. dollars.
At the end of August, 5.7 million people worked in manufacturing in Germany, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced on Tuesday. Rising by about 0.4 percent year on year, Destatis recorded the highest number of employees in manufacturing since records were started in 2005.
The German Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research is scheduled to publish its monthly indicator for economic sentiment in Germany on Tuesday.
