Famously, in late 2017, after a public announcement of an investigation into accounting irregularities, almost the entire value of Steinhoff was wiped out in basically an afternoon. Steinhoff is a classic case of late-period capitalism's industrial waste product: the malfunctioning transnational mega-corp. Headquartered in South Africa, registered in the Netherlands, Steinhoff has its primary listing on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. A retail holding company, it has businesses on three continents, lumped into clusters that operate in silos and make their financial disclosures independently. At the end of the company ' s financial year, consolidated results are delivered to Steinhoff HQ, where they are signed off by the auditors, approved by the board, and released to cheering shareholders. Except that Steinhoff had bought up a bunch of useless, underperforming operations and constructed a pyramid that was bound to topple.