by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
“The bezzle shrinks”: LendingClub, Theranos, Breitling Energy
LendingClub, the largest of the marketplace lenders, disclosed today that founder and former CEO Renaud Laplanche and his family had taken out 32 loans from LendingClub in order to inflate the company’s loan volumes – a key metric by which investors determine the company’s value – “in periods after December 2009.” It was a crucial moment: just before April 2010, when the company raised $24.5 million from investors including Foundation Capital, Morgenthaler Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Canaan Partners.