A Munich agribusiness is restructuring after 2024 as prosecutors probe whether the 2023 annual report masked the true financial position; the 2023 statements were signed by the former CEO and CFO, both of whom have since left, and in 2024 the group posted a 1.6 billion euro loss largely from write-downs, with the crisis only averted by cash injections from its two main private shareholders and lending banks; BaFin opened an inquiry into the 2023 accounts in November 2024, and the company remains a key supplier for farmers in southern and eastern Germany.

From a libertarian viewpoint, this is the predictable outcome of state involvement in corporate life. Hayek reminds us that knowledge is dispersed and centralized regulators cannot possibly grasp the full texture of a complex business; bureaucratic probes and accounting dashboards create signals that misread risk rather than clarify it, and they crowd out the price signals and private information channels that would discipline mismanagement. Nozick would argue that a minimal state’s proper role is the protection of rights, not the propping up of failing firms; if fraud occurred, private civil action and reputational discipline by markets should adjudicate it, not a BaFin-led rescue that currency-prints danger into the economy. Rand would insist that individuals bear the consequences of their voluntary exchanges and decisions; private investors stepping in to salvage liquidity demonstrates the market’s capacity to reallocate resources without coercive taxpayer involvement, whereas state bailouts breed dependency, cronyism, and a hollow morality of rescue.

The crisis, therefore, should be resolved by withdrawing state interference and allowing the market to clear the mess through private contracts, bankruptcy processes, and reputational mechanisms. The two shareholders and private lenders acted within a voluntary framework; no taxpayers’ money should be on the table to shield mismanagement from the consequences. Strengthen private auditing, enforce contract and property rights, and let the market decide which parts of the agricultural supply chain survive and which do not. If the business cannot survive under free-market discipline, let the resources be reallocated to more productive uses; the spontaneous order Hayek championed demands no sovereign referee to ‘save’ firms at the expense of others.