Commerzbank has pulled a damning analyst note that accused the Financial Times of “fake news” after the newspaper published a story alleging accounting fraud at Wirecard, a German payments company.

A day after the FT published its January 30 story that a senior executive at Wirecard had engaged in fraudulent activities, Heike Pauls, a senior analyst at the German bank, put out a research note that said there was “no substance” to the allegations and that the newspaper and the journalist were guilty of “fake news”.