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The petition was filed on September 4. By the end of that same day, four of the five members of the board were gone.
Synergy CHC Corp. filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition — the form of bankruptcy that keeps a company trading while it works out what comes next — with the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Columbia. Four directors resigned immediately after the filing: Alfred Baumeler, Nitin Kaushal, J. Paul SoRelle, and Teresa Thompson. The sole person left on the board is Jack Ross, who signed the 8-K the company filed with the SEC four days later.
For anyone holding shares, the position is this: the company's assets are now under court supervision, a single director is running the board, and the company says it expects to put forward a plan — either to restructure or to wind down — within 120 days. Which of those two it will be, the filing does not say.
The departures had been building for days before the filing. Baumeler had already stepped down as president on August 31. A week before that, on August 26, the company brought in Lauren P. Berret of Eisner Advisory Group as chief restructuring officer. The VerStandig Law Firm is acting as bankruptcy counsel, the filing states, pending court approval. The 8-K says the four directors resigned "in connection with the company's chapter 11 filing" and not over any dispute about operations or policy.
Shares closed 30.59% higher at $0.1080 on September 11, on dollar volume of about $42 million. Short volume on the session was about 50.7 million shares, or 54.68% of reported volume, according to the stock note. The free float is about 8.1 million shares.
Whether the company reorganises or liquidates, the answer is due within 120 days. Jack Ross is the one who will have to decide which way to push it.