23andMe, a previously high-flying genetic testing firm, introduced Sunday that it was declaring chapter and that it will search a purchaser.
The corporate additionally stated CEO Anne Wojcicki is resigning instantly and shall be changed by Chief Monetary and Accounting Officer Joe Selsavage as interim chief government.
23andMe moved in November to slash 40% of its workforce as a part of a restructuring plan, a step that got here roughly two months after its complete board resigned.
“We count on the court-supervised course of will advance our efforts to deal with the operational and monetary challenges we face, together with additional value reductions and the decision of authorized and leasehold liabilities,” 23andMe Chair Mark Jensen stated in a press release. “We consider within the worth of our folks and our property and hope that this course of permits our mission of serving to folks entry, perceive and profit from the human genome to stay on for the good thing about clients and sufferers.”
23andMe’s struggles have raised considerations concerning the privateness of its clients’ genetic information, which is used to hint folks’s ancestry, amongst different functions. In submitting for chapter safety, the corporate stated there shall be no adjustments to the way it manages and protects folks’s information.
23andMe customers should explicitly affirm that the corporate could share their private information, though folks’s information could possibly be included as a part of a sale of the corporate. Some states have handed privateness legal guidelines that may require an individual’s consent earlier than their genetic information is transferred from one entity to a different.
In its chapter announcement, 23andMe stated any purchaser of its property must observe relevant privateness legal guidelines for buyer information.
23andMe’s inventory, which as soon as traded for greater than $300 a share, fell to $1.79 earlier than the beginning of commerce Monday.
The corporate filed for Chapter 11 safety within the U.S. Chapter Courtroom for the Jap District of Missouri. 23andMe stated that, if granted approval in chapter courtroom, the corporate would solicit bids from potential acquirers over a 45-day interval and probably conduct an public sale.
