SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 23, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Hagens Berman urges Zhangmen Education Inc. (NYSE: ZME) investors with significant losses to submit your losses now, Women Beauty.
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP
Class Period: June 5, 2021 – Nov. 19, 2021 Lead Plaintiff Deadline: Jan. 18, 2021 Visit: www.hbsslaw.com/investor-fraud/ZME Contact An Attorney Now: ZME@hbsslaw.com 844-916-0895
Zhangmen Education Inc. (ZME) Securities Class Action:
The litigation focuses on Zhangmen’s statements leading up to its initial public offering conducted in early June 2021 about material risks the company faced concerning the Peoples Republic of China’s crackdown on for-profit tutoring companies.
More specifically, the IPO offering documents emphasized the strong growth and market demand in the PRC for Zhangmen’s online K-12 one-on-one tutoring services.
According to the complaint, Defendants’ statements were materially false and misleading because they failed to disclose the PRC was implementing sweeping new regulatory reforms that prohibited (1) profit-making by private education companies, (2) engaging in core-curriculum tutoring during weekends and vacations, and (3) capital-raising by companies like Zhangmen.
Defendants’ statements were brought into serious question beginning on July 23, 2021 (less than two months after the IPO), when the PRC unveiled its overhaul of its education sector, banning companies that teach school curriculum from making profits, raising capital or going public.
Zhangmen soon admitted the overhaul would materially and negatively impact nearly all aspects of its business and that all existing PRC education system providers, like Zhangmen, are subject to review and re-registration as non-profit organizations.
These events sent the price of Zhangmen shares sharply below its $11.50 IPO price.
“We’re focused on investors’ losses and proving Zhangmen concealed the PRC reforms that were underway at the time of its IPO, reforms that essentially invalidated its business model,” said Reed Kathrein, the Hagens Berman partner leading the investigation.
If you invested in Zhangmen and have significant losses, or have knowledge that may assist the firm’s investigation, click here to discuss your legal rights with Hagens Berman.
Whistleblowers: Persons with non-public information regarding Zhangmen should consider their options to help in the investigation or take advantage of the SEC Whistleblower program. Under the new program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Reed Kathrein at 844-916-0895 or email mailto:ZME@hbsslaw.com.
About Hagens Berman
Hagens Berman is a national law firm with eight offices in eight cities around the country and over eighty attorneys. The firm represents investors, whistleblowers, workers and consumers in complex litigation. More about the firm and its successes is located at hbsslaw.com. For the latest news visit our newsroom or follow us on Twitter at @classactionlaw.
Contact: Reed Kathrein, 844-916-0895
Cision
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In late June, Sharps Compliance, a Houston-based medical waste management corporation, reported stunning money final results. The rollout of Covid-19 vaccines experienced elevated desire for the company’s services, Sharps reported, and its earnings had extra than quadrupled. The company’s board granted Sharps’ top rated three executives twice the payment they’d acquired a yr before based on the general performance the trio shared nearly $1 million much more than they’d received in fiscal 2020, Securities and Exchange Commission filings show.
As publicly traded Sharps booked the enviable benefits, it also manufactured a request of the federal authorities. Final yr, the corporation experienced tapped taxpayers via a loan provider for a $2.2 million personal loan below the Paycheck Safety Plan, or PPP, a aid operation for little companies dealing with financial hardship due to coronavirus actions. A yr later on, Sharps required that personal loan forgiven.
On June 15, Sharps acquired its desire, regulatory filings demonstrate.
In the early, terrifying days of the pandemic, the federal governing administration raced to support businesses and people undone by Covid shutdowns. A signature exertion was the Paycheck Security Software, a forgivable loan procedure for smaller businesses. Overseen by the Smaller Business enterprise Administration, or SBA, it disbursed nearly $800 billion in total from April 2020 to May possibly 2021, when it finished.
Now, quite a few PPP borrowers, like Sharps, are asking that their financial loans be forgiven. And as of Nov. 7, about $610 billion in forgiveness had been granted, facts exhibit.
For compact enterprises, PPP was “the lifeline they necessary to survive for the duration of a when-in-technology economic disaster,” SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman explained.
But an investigation by NBC Information reveals that the operations of some organizations receiving financial loan forgiveness, like Sharps, seemed to prosper in the course of Covid, rather than be damage by it. And although these firms could not have predicted their standout final results when they applied for PPP financial loans, their requests for personal loan forgiveness arrived effectively right after the gains ended up obvious.
Underneath the program, PPP financial loans can be forgiven if recipients manage personnel and compensation stages where by they have been just before Covid and if at minimum 60 p.c of the bank loan proceeds are spent on payroll expenditures and the relaxation on other suitable expenses, these kinds of as lease or utility payments.
There is no proof that Sharps and the other providers discovered by NBC Information broke any laws or secured their personal loan forgiveness improperly.
A file year
When the governing administration launched the PPP, few guidelines were being in area the plan was to get cash to firms rapidly. The governing administration manufactured it apparent at the time that borrowers would be entitled to forgiveness if they fulfilled sure requirements.
Initially, debtors did have to certify “in good religion” that the funding was necessary when they used for financial loans, taking into account “their present-day small business activity” and their means to access other resources of cash to help their operations, these as the stock current market or deep-pocketed traders.
“It is unlikely that a public corporation with substantial market place price and obtain to cash markets will be capable to make the required certification in great faith,” the SBA explained.
Even so, some companies whose loans over $1 million have been forgiven had entry to stock marketplace funding both when they took the taxpayer revenue and when they acquired forgiveness, NBC Information uncovered. In the early times of the pandemic, the inventory sector was cratering, but considering that then, it has repeatedly strike new highs.
Some 157 companies with obtain to the stock market got about $300 million truly worth of the $610 billion that experienced been forgiven as of mid-Oct, or significantly less than .1 percent of the complete. For instance, Sharps’ stock industry value was about $100 million when it bought the PPP mortgage, and soon following it was forgiven, the company raised $17 million by issuing new shares, regulatory information display.
In addition, NBC Information established, far more than $120 million in financial loan forgiveness has absent to corporations recording increased revenues and earnings during Covid than in advance of it.
Sharps could not have been clearer about the pandemic’s effects. In its yearly report to shareholders, revealed two months soon after its mortgage was forgiven, it said, “To date, the firm has not identified any materials adverse impression of COVID-19 on its economic position and results of operations.”
Nell Minow is a company governance pro and vice chairman of ValueEdge Advisors, an advisory agency to institutional traders. She is essential of firms that took taxpayer cash when, she said, they did not require it and of company directors who awarded larger CEO pay back even though receiving federal financial loan forgiveness.
“When yet again, company directors and CEOs are the actual welfare queens, exploiting loopholes of sloppily drafted unexpected emergency laws,” Minow said. “This is an outrage.”
NBC Information asked Sharps to answer to the criticism and to deal with why it experienced requested forgiveness of the bank loan from taxpayers all through this kind of a affluent 12 months. A Sharps spokesman declined to deal with the issues but explained the corporation had met the SBA’s requirements for financial loan forgiveness.
“Sharps is a reasonably compact organization and the focused workers mobilized in a time of good uncertainty and threat, to play a very important part in the safe and sound assortment and disposal of COVID-19 connected healthcare waste,” the spokesman stated. “This mortgage played an vital part in enabling Sharps to confidently execute from this strategy, shield staff and assist prospects as they contended with the pandemic.”
In a regulatory filing, Sharps claimed it must retain documents of its $2.2 million personal loan for 6 a long time in situation the SBA decides to audit the company’s eligibility for the loan. “To the extent the eligibility is challenged, the enterprise may perhaps have to repay all or part of the PPP Personal loan,” the submitting said.
Acme United, a maker of sharpening tools and very first-assist kits, is another instance. The enterprise, primarily based in Shelton, Connecticut, tapped the taxpayers for a $3.5 million PPP mortgage in May perhaps 2020 and gained forgiveness for it in June of this year.
For the nine months that finished Sept. 30, Acme acquired 87 per cent more than it did in the very same period final yr, its filings demonstrate. And for 2020, the enterprise recorded that revenues had been up by 15 p.c, although earnings innovative by 47 {ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550}.
Its a few prime executives shared an more $1.1 million in overall compensation last calendar year, a 43 per cent improve around 2019.
In awarding the spend, Acme United’s board cited the company’s milestones and achievements, like a significant raise in e-commerce income and a $9.3 million acquisition of a Florida-primarily based manufacturer of antiseptic prep pads and towelettes. The corporation “has been ready to continue on to fulfill the demands of its customers in 2020 with out interruption,” it reported.
Walter Johnsen, the chairman and CEO of Acme United, reported in a cellphone connect with that the firm was privileged in becoming in a position to pivot to online income during the pandemic. The organization “worked very very carefully with the SBA, responding in truth to many requests,” he mentioned. “We met all their specifications and answered as totally and actually as we could, and they concluded that the mortgage would be forgiven.”
A 3rd general public organization that been given loan forgiveness amid a stellar effectiveness is Enzo Biochem, a New York City-based clinical lab and diagnostics company. It been given a $7 million PPP bank loan last calendar year, which was forgiven in June, regulatory documents display. The SBA granted the forgiveness as Enzo was enduring a file year, making a 55 {ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} maximize in product sales.
Fueling Enzo’s fiscal 2021 success, the company said, ended up its Covid testing products and solutions, for which it received unexpected emergency use authorizations and extensions from the Meals and Drug Administration. Enzo recorded earnings of just about $8 million for the year, up from a decline of $28.5 million in fiscal 2020.
It was “a validating and incredible 12 months for Enzo,” claimed Barry Weiner, the company’s president. Enzo will disclose its government fork out figures for 2021 this month.
Together with other corporations in the wellness care arena, Enzo received an array of authorities aid throughout the pandemic. Questioned about receiving financial loan forgiveness from taxpayers in the course of its banner year, an Enzo spokeswoman mentioned, “Our PPP loan performed just the services it was intended to provide — a lifeline to keep away from obtaining to enable persons go and possible shut down divisions of our firm — and we fulfilled all conditions to be eligible for financial loan forgiveness.”
Like Sharps and Acme United, Enzo had accessibility to stock market funding for its functions through the pandemic its market place benefit at the time it obtained the loan was $108 million. It is now $170 million.
The University of Kentucky, Coastal Cloud and Commerce Lexington in September announced the creation of a new UK Salesforce Consultancy Incubator Program. Coastal Cloud is a Salesforce multi-cloud expert partner based in Palm Coast, Fla., with offices in Lexington.
(CENTRAL KY. MARKET REVIEW) — From marketing, accounting and IT services to back-office support, Central Kentucky is stocked with business and professional services talent to help meet the needs of the region’s industry leaders.
The region’s business and professional services industry provides services and support for other businesses in various key industries—legal, architectural, engineering, and consulting services—and basic services that support daily activities, such as back-office support operations, accounting, shared services and processing facilities.
Lexington is home to more than 70 headquarters operations, many of which require business services firms to help them operate. A strong professional services sector is crucial to the region’s economy: The business and professional services industry accounts for 13.3{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} of jobs in the Lexington Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA).
Central Kentucky is an ideal location for business services firms. It has an educated workforce, the infrastructure to support businesses of all sizes, and it is one of the lowest cost-of-business locations in the United States. More than 41{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} of Lexington residents older than 25 have a bachelor’s degree or higher, making the city the 14th most highly educated city in the country.
Lexington has consistently been ranked as one of the best places to live and work. In 2021, Wallet Hub named it the No. 5 Best Run City in America and No. 15 on its list of Cities Whose Unemployment Rates are Bouncing Back the Most. SmartAsset named it No. 11 on its list of Best Cities for First-Time Homebuyers and No. 10 on its list of Cities with the Best Work-Life Balance.
Business services firms choose Lexington because of its productive workforce and central location, according to Commerce Lexington.
Kentucky Employers’ Mutual Insurance, the largest provider of workers’ compensation insurance in Kentucky, is located in Lexington. KEMI provides coverage to more than 20,000 policyholders in all 120 counties of the state, educates Kentucky businesses about workplace safety and invests in building community partnerships. It also offers free workplace safety resources.
Over the past year, KEMI has seen growth in its education sector, said Ryan Worthen, director of marketing and customer experience. It now insures 84{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} of public school districts in the state and more than a third of Kentucky colleges and universities.
KEMI has paid over $16 million in policyholder dividends since November 2020.
“We also refunded an additional $16 million to Kentucky schools and are anticipating a return of $20 million to eligible coal operators as a result of KEMI’s proactive management with the Kentucky Coal Workers’ Pneumoconiosis Fund,” Worthen said.
The KEMI team, comprised of about 200 employees in and around Central Kentucky, quickly adapted to the challenges of COVID-19. In March 2020, KEMI employees switched to remote working and collaboration with technology that allowed them to ensure business continuity and service to thousands of agents, policyholders and injured, Worthen said.
Global firm Rubicon working to reinvent recycling
Rubicon’s global headquarters is located in City Center in downtown Lexington.
Rubicon, a software platform that provides smart waste and recycling solutions to businesses and governments worldwide, in 2021 located its global headquarters at Lexington’s City Center. It is a leader in providing cloud-based waste and recycling solutions.
Rubicon was founded in 2008 in Kentucky by Nate Morris and Marc Spiegel. The company’s mission is to end waste and move cities and businesses of all kinds away from the reliance on environmentally destructive landfills. Using technology to drive environmental innovation, the company helps turn businesses into more sustainable enterprises, and neighborhoods into greener and smarter places to live and work.
With more than 4.9 million service locations, Rubicon focuses on developing software solutions that bring new transparency to the waste and recycling industry—encouraging customers to make data-driven decisions that lead to more efficient and effective operations as well as more sustainable outcomes.
Rubicon manages all waste and recycling services through an extensive network of more than 7,000 vendor and hauler partners. Its programs span cardboard, plastic, paper, metal, glass, electronics recycling, construction and demolition, organics recycling (including food waste and composting services), and single-stream recycling. Rubicon’s subject matter experts manage commodity markets, zero-waste programs and other sustainability offerings.
Accounting and business solutions
The Bluegrass region is home to large accounting firms that specialize in offering business solutions that reach beyond traditional tax and assurance services. Two of those are Dean Dorton and MCM CPAs & Advisors.
Dean Dorton is headquartered in Lexington, where it has 151 employees, and offers accounting, tax and business consulting services from its locations in Lexington, Louisville and Raleigh, N.C. The firm helps clients strategize, adapt and change in every stage of business, from startup to growth and proper succession planning.
Dean Dorton, ranked No. 111 on Inside Public Accounting’s 2021 top firms list, offers audit and assurance, accounting and financial outsourcing, tax, business consulting and advisory services, cybersecurity and technology services to companies in all sectors and of all sizes. In July 2021, Dean Dorton acquired data analytics company Breakpoint Technology, a full-service IT consulting firm in Louisville. Data analytics is something all businesses should be utilizing, said Dean Dorton president and CEO David Bundy.
“You hear ‘big data’ but what you’re really looking at is taking your data and making it work for you—being able to make business decisions a lot faster because you can actually see what’s happening in a more real-time manner,” he said.
In addition to being a recognized leader in IT business management and collaboration solutions, Dean Dorton’s team has experience in integrated portal solutions, workflow automation, data and analysis solutions, enterprise budgeting for academic medical centers, custom development solutions and more.
Over the past year, Dean Dorton has seen tremendous growth in its business advisory and consulting services, as well as its accounting and financial outsourcing business, Bundy said.
Technology has made a big impact on the services Dean Dorton offers to its clients, he said.
“Technology makes doing our business easier and allows us to provide services to businesses anytime, anywhere throughout the world. For example, with accounting and financial outsourcing, businesses have access to their financial data 24/7 via mobile phone connection or app,” he said. “Technology has always been an integral piece of providing services to clients.”
Barney Miller’s is a staple in downtown Lexington.
MCM CPAs & Advisors, one of the largest CPA firms in Kentucky, has five offices in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. The firm has 27 employees in its Lexington office.
From accounting to business management, MCM has transformed over the years from a CPA firm to a business solutions and advising firm with a full range of services for businesses and organizations large and small. MCM offers expertise in accounting, audit and tax-related services, as well as risk advisory, tax services and technology solutions. Its expanded services include business valuation, litigation support, fraud examination, and business start-up and advisory services. MCM’s brand lines also include MCM Capital Markets Group, MCM HR Solutions and MCM Technology Solutions.
The firm has helped its clients navigate the pandemic.
“With employees going remote and now returning back to the office for at least some of the time, cybersecurity has become a significant challenge as the threats continue to evolve with our changing workplaces,” said Brad Smith, MCM managing partner. “The MCM Technology Solutions team has been working with teams in assessing vulnerabilities and proactively helping mitigate the identified risks.”
MCM was recently ranked by Inside Public Accounting’s Top 100 list as the 72nd largest accounting firm in the United States (based on net revenue), and has been awarded Best Places to Work distinctions in multiple states and cities.
Marketing, IT and other business services
Central Kentucky has a unique mix of software and technology companies, marketing agencies and other solutions providers that serve companies of all specialties and sizes.
In today’s business world, rapidly changing technology—and circumstances—requires IT experts to help companies stay on top of their game.
Central Kentucky’s IT managed service providers include SIS, The AME Group (formerly called Integrity IT), NetGain Technologies, Intelligent IT, SimplifIT, Unified Technologies, Next Century Technologies and TeamLogic IT, among others. MCM and Dean Dorton also offer a full range of cybersecurity services.
Coastal Cloud, an IT service management company headquartered in Florida, operates a regional headquarters in Louisville and has offices in Lexington. The Louisville location houses the company’s first domestic solution center, where almost a quarter of Coastal Cloud’s team is stationed.
Coastal Cloud offers expertise in program management, project execution, business analysis, data modeling, data migration, user training and the skills necessary for a successful migration to next-generation technologies.
In September 2021, Coastal Cloud entered into a partnership with the City of Lexington, University of Kentucky and Commerce Lexington to create a new UK Salesforce Consultancy Incubator Program. Through the partnership, Coastal Cloud will train students, recent college graduates and new or aspiring Salesforce administrators to become effective Salesforce consultants.
Marketing firms help Central Kentucky businesses tell their stories via multiple platforms.
Bringing In The Green is a specialty firm located in Lexington that helps small- to medium-sized businesses generate revenue, offering customizable marketing and sales solutions. Owned by marketing and sales veteran Debbie Green, the company offers media planning and buying, promotional planning, targeted creative messaging strategies, event planning, media sales training and public relations services.
“We provide strategic marketing consulting that drives results. We create customized marketing plans based on client goals,” Green said.
“We help business owners who need marketing direction but are not ready to hire full-time, overloaded marketing and communication directors needing guidance with special projects, and marketing directors who do not have traditional or digital media buying experience.”
Bringing In The Green’s goal is to make marketing easier by making data-driven decisions and utilizing increased sales as the ultimate success benchmark.
Over the past year, Bringing in The Green has added several new clients who no longer have time to coordinate marketing efforts, meet with vendors, and direct website updates and social media strategies.
“They hire my company to reduce stress and make growing their business fun again,” Green said.
On the move
An eco-friendly furniture and junk recycling and removal service for residences and businesses opened in Central Kentucky in September 2021.
Junkluggers is on a mission to make Kentucky a little greener and eliminate 100{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} of re-usable waste from landfills by the year 2025. Franchise owners Christine and her son, Cooper Van Tatenhove, have always been passionate about the community and environment in the Bluegrass.
Junkluggers hauls away unwanted clothing, furniture, appliances and e-waste. Their expert luggers handle all the heavy lifting and transportation, recycling as many items as possible.
The owners also hope to make a positive impact on local nonprofits, with which they will share some of the gently used items they recover that need a second home.
“It’s all about helping community and working hand-in-hand with our philanthropic partners, taking away items and then giving back to those who need it,” said Chris Van Tatenhove. “This is all while reducing waste by recycling and keeping items out of landfills.”
Technology partners
Barney Miller’s has been a staple in downtown Lexington for nearly 100 years. It started as an auto parts store and transitioned to selling radios and record players. In the 1940s, Barney and second-generation Harry Miller sold the first TV in Kentucky. Over the years, third-generation Barney Miller guided the company away from a purely retail format into an installation company. Barney Miller’s is continually evolving. Today the company designs, installs, programs and services electronic systems for homes and businesses, including home theater, stereo systems, smart homes, networks, security, camera systems, AV furniture and seating, conference rooms, training rooms, huddle spaces and motorized shades.
“Over the past year, we have experienced unprecedented growth in custom electronic system upgrades for existing homes and new construction installations,” said owner Barney Miller, whose grandfather started the business. “Additionally, we’ve installed numerous easy-to-operate conference rooms and huddle spaces for businesses.”
Lexington firm 46 Solutions offers managed IT services, cybersecurity and audio/video integration. It also specializes in home entertainment technology and operates a large showroom—featuring home theater, outdoor audio/visual options, smart home and automation products, and TVs and projectors—in Lexington Green.
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The European Investment Bank (EIB), the lending arm of the EU, has vowed to near a loophole that permits it to lend money to oil and fuel corporations irrespective of a ban on funding fossil gas initiatives.
The EIB, the world’s biggest multilateral financial institution, which is lively in 160 nations around the world, announced in 2019 it was phasing out lending to fossil fuel projects within two yrs, as it sought to grow to be a “climate bank”.
Whilst the transfer was welcomed as a victory for the local weather motion, campaign teams stated the lender had failed to shut quite a few loopholes.
Now the lender has acted to near a person inconsistency with the bloc’s climate goals.
From 2022 onwards, the EIB will end lending to polluting organizations that want to finance reduced-carbon tasks. This would necessarily mean, for instance, the EIB will no lengthier finance an oil company’s wind power venture. All recipients of EIB loans will be needed to attract up decarbonisation options.
“At the EIB group, we have heard the warnings,” stated its president Werner Hoyer, as the decision was posted days ahead of the begin of Cop26.
“As just one of the main multilateral banks for local weather motion, we are further more increasing our local climate ambition,” the lender claimed in a statement.
“In basic, EIB will no extended finance standard small-carbon projects of large-emitting corporations if the corporation continues to run or devote in functions that are not aligned with the aims of the Paris settlement.”
The determination is probably to have an effect on about 50 organizations and public sector bodies, who make up about 10{ac23b82de22bd478cde2a3afa9e55fd5f696f5668b46466ac4c8be2ee1b69550} of the recipients of EIB financial loans.
But the EIB is unlikely to be halting financial loans to scores of consumers right away. Financial institution officers put far more emphasis on helping companies build business designs that are in line with the Paris agreement.
The EIB is taking a distinct method to banks, which will be necessary to fulfill worldwide expectations of transparency if they want to benefit from EIB financial loans.
Banks will be obliged to observe the criteria set by the Undertaking Pressure on Weather-Relevant Economical Disclosures, championed by the previous Lender of England governor Mark Carney, which obliges organizations to divulge their publicity to risks of climate adjust.
Xavier Sol at Counter Equilibrium, a coalition of NGOs set up to watch the EIB, explained the EU lender’s latest actions ended up “a to start with step in the right direction” but challenges remained.
There was, he explained, a significant loophole close to the trustworthiness of the decarbonisation programs that organizations would be essential to submit.
Counter Harmony argues that EIB bank loan recipients really should be less than an obligation to draw up science-centered climate targets and specific strategies for lessening emissions inside of three to five years.
Obligations on fossil gasoline providers ought to be even additional stringent, like a “credible decarbonisation plan” to stage out coal by 2030, fuel by 2035 and to move to renewable vitality by 2040 at the most current.
“Ultimately, this does not stick to the spirit of the Electrical power Lending Plan and the public get in touch with from the EIB to cease lending to fossil fuels,” the campaigner said, referring to the bank’s 2019 local weather approach.
