Episode 683
Elizabeth Holmes
Sun, 2019-Mar-17 02:27 UTC
Length - 2:52
Direct Link
Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.
With 258,110 views on Saturday, 16 March 2019 our article of the day is Elizabeth Holmes.
Elizabeth Anne Holmes (; born February 3, 1984) is the founder and former CEO of Theranos, a now-defunct company known for its false claims to have devised revolutionary blood tests that used very small amounts of blood. In 2015, Forbes named Holmes as the youngest and wealthiest self-made female billionaire in America on the basis of a $9 billion valuation of Theranos. By the next year, following revelations of potential fraud, Forbes revised her net worth to zero dollars, and Fortune named Holmes one of the "World's Most Disappointing Leaders".The decline of Theranos began in 2015 when a series of journalistic and regulatory investigations revealed doubts about the company's technology claims and whether Holmes had potentially misled investors and the government. In 2018, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission charged Theranos and Holmes with deceiving investors by "massive fraud" through false or exaggerated claims about the accuracy of her blood-testing technology, which Holmes settled by paying a $500,000 fine, returning shares to the company, relinquishing her voting control of Theranos, and being barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for ten years. In June 2018, a federal grand jury indicted Holmes and former Theranos COO Ramesh Balwani on nine counts of wire fraud and two counts of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for distributing blood tests with falsified results to consumers.The early credibility of Theranos was in part interpreted as an effect of Holmes's personal connections with an ability to recruit the support of influential people including Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Mattis, and Betsy DeVos. Holmes was in a relationship with her COO Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani, whom she met when she was 18 and he was 37. Holmes's career, the rise and dissolution of her company, and the subsequent fallout is the subject of a book, Bad Blood by Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, and an upcoming film of the same name directed by Adam McKay and starring Jennifer Lawrence.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 02:27 UTC on Sunday, 17 March 2019.
For the full current version of the article, see Elizabeth Holmes on Wikipedia.
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