One of many high executives engaged on Apple’s Mission Titan self-driving automobile staff is being sued by the SEC. Bloomberg experiences that SEC is suing Ulrich Kranz “for allegedly breaking securities guidelines” throughout his time as CEO on the electrical automobile startup Canoo.
Kranz joined Apple again in June of 2021 to work on the staff growing Apple Automotive and the related self-driving automobile applied sciences. Kranz spent 30 years at BMW, serving because the senior vp of the staff that developed the BMW i3 and i8 electrical and hybrid vehicles.
When he departed BMW he 2016, Kranz spent three months on the EV startup Faraday Future earlier than confounding and serving as CEO of Canoo. At Canoo, he pushed the corporate to go public by a merger with an SPAC, or particular goal acquisition firm. Kranz left Canoo in April of 2021 and joined Apple simply weeks later.
The brand new lawsuit accuses Kraz and Canoo’s former CFO, Paul Balciunas, of “offering unreasonable income projections.” Kranz can also be being accused of “misstating how a lot he was paid.” By way of the lawsuit, the SEC hopes to stop each Kranz and Balciunas from “serving as officers at public firms” and cost them each a high quality. Canoo itself paid a $1.5 million high quality when it settled an SEC investigation earlier this yr centered on its SPAC merger.
The lawsuit comes after the SEC opened an investigation in 2021 into the corporate’s “operations, enterprise mannequin, revenues, income technique, buyer agreements, earnings, and different associated subjects, together with the current departures of sure of the corporate’s officers.”
As our colleagues at Electrek reported in March:
After going public in 2020, together with a slew of different electrical car startups (and SPACs normally), Canoo turned one of many talked about shares with vital progress potential within the EV section.
Nonetheless, the hype quickly dissipated. In April 2021, the SEC opened an investigation into the corporate’s merger with a particular acquisition goal firm (SPAC), Hennessy Capital Acquisition Corp (HCAC), to go public. The scrutiny was a part of a broader investigation that included a number of well-liked EV shares such us Nikola (NKLA), Lordstown Motors (RIDE), and Faraday Future (FFIE).
The SEC knowledgeable the corporate that it believed, below its investigation, that sure former senior executives misled buyers in late 2020 and early 2021 concerning income projections. In March 2021, new management revised the projections to zero after eliminating engineering companies as a possible income stream.
Apple has not commented on the lawsuit. Because it stands at present, Kranz nonetheless works on the firm as a part of the Mission Titan staff. Bloomberg experiences that Kranz is presently “overseeing {hardware} design for the automobile” and experiences to Kevin Lynch.
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