‘Cum-Ex’ is Latin – and it means ‘with without’.

In essence, it’s a massive stock-trading scam by bankers, brokers, hedge funds, international tax firms, investment companies, lawyers and insurance companies. By acting as promoters to help their clients get a refund for a tax they never actually paid for, they have defrauded EU member states by billions of euros.

This rapid trading of shares with (cum) and without (ex) dividend rights thus gave rise to the scandal of the same name.

How much did this cost us? How did this happen? Which banks are ripping us off (again!)? What’s being done about it? Read the explainer here