Business
EV maker Fisker to be liquidated under plan that will keep owners on the road
Troubled electric vehicle maker Fisker Inc. has reached a settlement with creditors that will allow it to liquidate its assets while working with owners to keep their pricey SUVs on the road.
The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in June after failing to reach a strategic agreement with another automaker that could provide it with more capital and domestic manufacturing capacity.
The global agreement reached Friday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware allows Fisker management to remain in charge for some time as the operation winds down.
That was important to Fisker, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and car owners, who filed objections to converting the bankruptcy to Chapter 7, noting the startup’s only vehicle — a premium SUV called the Ocean — has several open recalls for faulty door handles, loss of power and other problems.
“The owners strongly believe that Fisker owes them a responsibility to ensure that their vehicles are safe and operable, and that the best way for Fisker to fulfill that promise is through a Chapter 11 process,” said attorney Daniel Shamah, who represents the Fisker Owners Assn. “We can be sure that employees and the advisors who are helping the company do this remain on board.”
The liquidation plan, which details how proceeds from asset sales will be distributed among various creditors, is subject to a vote by all unsecured creditors.
The plan also calls for the owners association to have a voice in the sale of Fisker’s intellectual property, which includes the designs and computer code that were necessary to build and operate the vehicles. The owners need long-term access to Fisker’s “cloud software,” which is crucial for sending over-the-air updates to the vehicle software that controls the Ocean.
Other issues, including access to parts and long-term service, are still being negotiated outside the bankruptcy process, Shamah said.
However, with secured and unsecured claims against the company likely to top $1 billion, shareholders who invested in Fisker are unlikely to get their money back.
“It’s a virtual certainty that there will be no money for equity. There’s no way you’re going to have enough to pay claims in full in this liquidation,” said David Golubchik, a veteran bankruptcy attorney at Levene, Neale, Bender, Yoo & Golubchik in Los Angeles.
Founded in 2016 by auto designer Henrik Fisker, the company went public in 2020 via a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, backed by private equity firm Apollo Global Management. The company raised $1 billion in equity capital and borrowed even more, but ran out of money and only sold about 7,000 of its vehicles.
The Ocean was envisioned as a competitor to Tesla’s Model Y, but Fisker had trouble making and delivering the snazzy SUV through a direct sales model borrowed from Tesla. The SUV also was plagued by software glitches, though its ride and build were praised.
Fisker made more than 11,000 Oceans before it stopped production, according to a court filing. The bankruptcy court already has approved the sale of the company’s remaining inventory of 3,321 Oceans, which were acquired for $46.25 million by American Lease, a Bronx, N.Y., business that leases Uber and Lyft cars.
Fisker, which was based in Manhattan Beach before shutting down its headquarters and moving to Orange County, has few other hard assets.
Henrik Fisker, the chairman and chief executive, built the company to be asset light, with vehicles assembled at an Austrian factory owned by a subsidiary of Magna International, a Canadian manufacturer of automobile components.
Fisker’s most valuable asset might be its intellectual property, but it’s unclear what bids it may attract.
The settlement came after discussions among Fisker and its secured and unsecured creditors following a dispute over whether to convert the case to a Chapter 7 liquidation run by a trustee.
The conversion was sought by the company’s largest secured creditor: CVI Investments and its investment manager, Heights Capital Management Inc., both affiliates of Susquehanna International Group, a large Pennsylvania trading firm founded by billionaire Jeff Yass.
CVI argued the administrative costs of operating under Chapter 11 were draining and that were was little likelihood the company would remain in business.
However, its status as a legitimate secured creditor was questioned by the Committee of Unsecured Creditors, including U.S. Bank, which has filed a $681-million claim related to Fisker notes it holds.
Last year, Fisker sold convertible notes to CVI, receiving gross proceeds of $450 million, according to a court filing by the unsecured creditors. Fisker filed its third-quarter earnings report late, technically defaulting on the notes and converting them into secured debt.
The committee alleged that CVI profited an estimated $57 million from the sales of its converted shares, diluting the stock and driving its price under 10 cents a share this year.
Shareholders have called for the Securities and Exchange Commission to look into CVI’s and Height’s roles in the bankruptcy, including potential short selling that may have driven Fisker’s shares to pennies. Attorneys for CVI and Heights did not return messages seeking comment.
Fisker has received a subpoena from the SEC, The Times reported last week. It is unclear what information the agency is seeking.
The company is facing multiple shareholder lawsuits that focus on Fisker’s late third-quarter filing and the role it played in the collapse of the stock price. In 2021, the company’s market cap approached $8 billion before shares traded at pennies prior to the bankruptcy filing.
The lawsuits included allegations that Fisker, his wife Geeta Gupta-Fisker (the company’s co-founder, chief financial officer and chief operating officer) violated their fiduciary duties and securities laws. The company declined to comment.
Fisker’s stake in the company is now virtually worthless, but he sold about $20 million worth of shares in 2021 well before the stock declined. Fisker and his wife also received bonuses in December of a little more than $1 million each, which were disclosed last week in a bankruptcy court filing by Fisker. The company declined to comment on the reason for the bonuses.
Evan Scott, 39, who owns a Fisker Ocean and figures he lost about $50,000 on the company’s stock, said he was shocked to learn about the bonuses.
“As a shareholder and a car owner who had supported Henrik and his wife, I am seeing red,” Scott said. “They knew the company was in dire straits. They were just expediting bankruptcy by doing that.”
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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