Lending Club delays meeting, raises rates
Less than a month after its founder and chief executive was forced to resign, Lending Club on Tuesday announced a significant tightening of its lending standards and took the rare step of postponing its annual shareholder meeting.
A pioneer in the so-called marketplace lending industry, the firm has been hit by both internal troubles and from broader forces that have stung the online lending business.
Early last month, Lending Club dismissed CEO Renaud Laplanche, the firm’s founder, as chief executive following revelations that the company sold a batch of tainted loans to investment bank Jefferies.
Concerns about the Jefferies loans — combined with broader worries about the quality of consumer loans issued by online lenders and a feared regulatory crackdown — pushed Lending Club last month to say it could have a harder time finding investors to buy its loans and might have to issue fewer loans as a result.
Lending Club was supposed to conduct its shareholder meeting online, but in a last-minute regulatory filing, the company postponed it until June 28.