Theranos Low on Cash After Settlement with Walgreens
wsj.com
wsj.com
So there's an open question about when he knew about this fraud. But clearly he didn't have a problem staying on even after it became public knowledge.
And there's also this:
In 2012, for instance, Holmes began talking to the Department of Defense about using Theranos’s technology on the battlefield in Afghanistan. But specialists at the D.O.D. soon uncovered that the technology wasn’t entirely accurate, and that it had not been vetted by the Food and Drug Administration. When the department notified the F.D.A. that something was amiss, according to The Washington Post, Holmes contacted Marine general James Mattis, who had initiated the pilot program. He immediately e-mailed his colleagues about moving the project forward. Mattis was later added to the company board when he retired from the service. (Mattis says he never tried to interfere with the F.D.A. but rather was “interested in rapidly having the company’s technologies tested legally and ethically.”)
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/elizabeth-holmes-the...
So he was told by the DOD that it didn't work after he initiated a pilot program for Theranos.. and continued to push it internally.
too big to jail
The company lied to its own board of directors and investors. I don't think they are the ones who need to be jailed.
>> *billionaires, former senators and secretaries of state*
The whole thing smacks of an outright fraud to skim funds from obamacare and elsewhere via pharmacy blood testing fees..
You just described the business model of about 1/8th of all companies operating in the US healthcare business...
Prison isn't a random card you can play to threaten people who you don't like, unless you want to go back to the USSR.
Whilst I've only held board memberships in Australia I expect it's a concept that translates somewhat to other countries.
Board members can be held personally responsible for the misconduct of a company (criminally as well as civilly).
And I was a huge fan of hers (I thought she would be a good role model for my daughter) before her crimes came to light.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XBZFQR2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?...
It is very well reviewed.
> each a realm unto itself, run by a US Attorney who is almost untouchable by headquarters in faraway DC.
In fact, each US Attorney can be fired at will by the President. At will and not for cause. The Fed Chair can be fired but only for cause.
This leads to US Attorneys living in a very political world. They are politically appointed (Chris Christie), Senatorially confirmed (Jeff Sessions USAG) and politically removed (George W Bush). So defendants who are politically connected are not going to get prosecuted and that's that.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dismissal_of_U.S._attorneys_co...
I'm not so sure...
This isn't 23andMe where a viable product got caught up in legal fights over reporting. As I understood it, the fraudulent component here was "everything at all worthwhile about the product". Are they just a shell at this point, trying to use the team and leftover money as a basis for a new project? Do they have some existing offering which isn't totally valueless? What's happening here?
Scenario 1: I have $100 in gains this year. I owe $30 in taxes. I am left with $70. (Say $100 is 30% bracket)
Scenario 2: I have $100 in gains this year. I write off a $10 loss. (Say $90 is 25% bracket). I owe $22.5 in taxes. I am left with $67.5.
Is it the case that writing off the loss is better, if you can be bumped so far down the brackets that (gains - loss)(1-lower_tax_rate) > (gains) (1 - higher_tax_rate)?
She stinks of fraud already. If she told me the fund was doing great, I would get suspicious that she was turning into the next bernie madoff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Meriwether
"A year after LTCM's collapse, in 1999, Meriwether founded JWM Partners LLC. (...) Meriwether opened his third hedge fund venture, named JM Advisors Management, also based in Greenwich, Connecticut, in 2010."
Meriwether blows up and is not a fraud. But then there's this guy:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/jon-corzine-considers-launching...
Though in all fairness I don't know whether he pulled that one off.
A few months after they blew up, their portfolio was profitable again.
He didn't. In fact, that was his 2nd attempt at raising a fund.. he tried in 2012 right after mf. And he's currently working on his third attempt to raise a fund. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-05-18/corzine-tries-launc...
If anything, that's a pretty good example of my point.. no one wants to give their money to a fraud.
As I understand it, Holmes controls an outright majority of the voting rights, so the question is does Holmes have anything left to gain from Theranos operating.
There's a lot of patents, via Holmes. Someone in the last Theranos thread also pointed out that whatever hardware does exist may have licensing value for other developers. The owners may be planning to part it out.
Theranos in June was seeking to raise about $50 million from existing investors. The company declined to comment on whether it had succeeded in doing so, or on its current cash position. It isn’t clear when Theranos will make the payments to Walgreens."
Serious question: Is there a decent future for business schools? Has anyone done a decent ROI calculation on them based on the financial and business results of the past 15/20 years? Are they currently on an upward trend? Downward? Stagnant?
The reason I'm asking is that from half a globe away (Eastern Europe) the MBA and business school hype seems to have died a little compared to 10 years ago, as in I don't get to see "this guy/lady graduated from Wharton School" all that often when reading business/financial profiles.
https://www.economist.com/news/business/21601884-payback-tim... http://www.economist.com/whichmba/think-twice
Yes, as long as you understand their purpose. They exist as a form of class signalling. [0] Many of the older forms of nepotism/cronyism have been made illegal. Racial and IQ discrimination are also illegal. Therefore, business schools and law schools fill the gap. They exist to tell an employer that the applicant is either a member of their class or an ally.
Suppose you take a veteran engineer heading into management, and send him/her to get an MBA. Will they come back no better for it?
You won't find engineers saying that medical degrees are just BS.
Fact is, business degrees are thin on content. I know this because I studied engineering and went to a business school. Now of course any degree has some kind of content, but business content just has very little that would pass for being academic content. The core stuff like Porter's Five Forces and Taylorism is no different than what you'd "know" if you read some of those airport magazines now and again.
Imagine an engineering class where you just watched a Discovery show about how the Channel Tunnel was made. Yes, it's content, but nobody should be hired to build tunnels based on having seen that video of the French guy shaking hands with the British guy.
But that is how we hire executives. A guy who knows some things about the history of some industry, and can talk about it confidently.
> Suppose you take a veteran engineer heading into management, and send him/her to get an MBA. Will they come back no better for it?
They'll know something about the culture of management, which will be useful for duping someone into promoting him. Well actually I rather like the idea of having technically trained managers, so I'd cheer that on. But not because you'll know how to manage from studying management.
Business schools can serve a very productive education service when students take the finance/accounting tracks if they don't have those backgrounds. This allows people without those backgrounds to either transition into new careers or get the underlying knowledge they need to take on new responsibilities/roles in their existing careers.
A lot of work in both finance and accounting are 'complex' so daily practice require detailed knowledge. Even if they may not be 'sophisticated', (e.g. PhD level mathematics). Some areas, like derivatives, are both complex and sophisticated.
Sources: 1. My Mom got an MBA to change fields and then used her learned knowledge in finance+accounting constantly working for a state municipal agency. 2. Our CEO got an MBA to learn the knowledge he needed to move forward in his career/transition into different roles.
I agree with the other responses to you question that in some areas of the US (e.g. Silicon Valley, East Coast) a 'name brand' MBAs may be used as a signaling requirement for certain jobs or to advance in a career - more so than for eduction. This gets more silly when a personal already has the necessary skills! And part of the value these schools supply to their graduates a network of similarly interested business contacts.
So would the veteran engineer moving into management be helped... perhaps/but probably not. But can a person looking to change fields or areas benefit hugely by doing an MBA? Yes. Absolutely.
As indicated in your link, IQ tests and diplomas are treated the same way by Griggs: they are okay when they are a reasonable measure of job performance and not okay when they're not.
Now, nobody -likes- getting stuck with a needle, but it really isn't as terrible as many make it out to be (unless they miss the vein for an IV - over and over - but that's just up to incompetence or being unlucky).
Certainly not so bad as to perpetrate something of this magnitude.
That said, I tend to wonder if it is possible at all (that is, within the realm of what our technology currently allows for, or what can be done with potential near-future technology) to be able to do the kind of testing at all?
Basically - can you take a drop of blood, and analyse it in such a manner to do all the tests touted by Theranos (even if only in a lab setting and "by hand")? I know for some things it is possible (we all know of glucose testing for those with diabetes, and I've seen something similar for testing of LDL/HDL levels) - so can that be extrapolated to other things - and all with one drop?
I don't know - but I'd love to know. Personally, I don't mind having blood drawn for a test - what I don't like is having to go to a special center to have it done, or to have it done as a separate appointment or whatnot. It would be much more efficient if the doctor or nurse could just poke my finger, get a drop, and stick it in a hand-held machine or something and get an instant reading.
But so far, that seems like it's still in the realm of science fiction than possible science fact.
It seems this whole thing was a "build hype now, invent the actual stuff later" policy taken to the extreme. Elizabeth Holmes has done a disservice to the tech community's reputation.
None of these things fall under the category of Tech Industry, much less its reputation, which is what I was speaking to. In the case of the patients, they were rarely direct customers of Theranos and their actual provider (like Walgreens) has the responsibility of arbitrage. Walgreens, of course, is doing so via suing Theranos.
For the VC funds, risk is a necessary condition to "sit at the table", so if Theranos bankrupts a VC, the blame rests only on the VC itself.
The only group I agree may have been hurt are the lower employees of Theranos. Sadly, that seems to be part of the new American status quo. $company plays fast and loose with the rules, and the grunts (or taxpayers) suffer the consequences.
[0]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/762462.One_Up_On_Wall_St...