Renaud Laplanche had a terrible no good very bad 2016. But the founder and longtime CEO of Lending Club is back with a new lending startup called Upgrade, along with the support of investors who’ve provided the company with $60 million in funding.
It’s a comeback that’s been roughly one year in the making.
It was in May of last year that Laplanche, who founded Lending Club in 2006 and took it public in late 2014, was forced to resign from his role as CEO. According to reports at the time, the company’s board lost faith in Laplanche after it was informed that $3 million in Lending Club’s loans had been sold to the bank Jefferies with falsified dates, and that Laplanche himself had undisclosed conflicts of interest.
Specifically, reporters were told, Laplanche owned a stake in a fund called Cirrix Capital in which Lending Club later bought an interest at Laplanche’s urging — unaware that he was a limited partner in the fund.
The board later acknowledged in a regulatory filing that some but “not all members” of the risk committee were aware of Laplanche’s investment.
Laplanche’s role in an approved stock buyback was also reportedly under investigation by the SEC at one point.
Laplanche said he wasn’t available to answer questions for this story, but in a Dealbook interview he disagreed with the board’s characterization of the problems at Lending Club last year and declined to discuss the issue further.
A source close to Laplanche further says he doesn’t think that Laplanche was ever “personally being investigated” by the SEC.
Either way, Laplanche wasted little time in launching a rival to Lending Club. By August of last year, Laplanche and several Lending Club veterans — including Jeff Bogan, who was among a group of senior managers who also stepped down or were dismissed when Laplanche resigned…