LUCKIN COFFEE AXES CHAIRMAN, NAMES NEW CEO

Luckin Coffee has ousted its chairman and named a new chief executive, as the company tries to draw a line under an accounting scandal that has rocked its business, Sherisse Pham reported for CNN Business in the afternoon of July 14, 2020.

The embattled Chinese coffee chain named Jinyi Guo chairman and CEO, after shareholders voted to remove co-founder and former chairman Charles Zhengyao Lu, Luckin said in a regulatory filing on Monday.

Luckin went public last year and surged due to what appeared to be strong sales growth. But then the company — which was once hailed as China's homegrown rival to Starbucks — admitted in April that a good portion of its 2019 revenues were fabricated. Its shares collapsed following the revelations. Luckin stock is down nearly 93% for the year, and the Nasdaq has decided to delist the company.

Guo has been the acting CEO since May, after Luckin fired chief executive Jenny Zhiya Qian and chief operating officer Jian Liu — the executive whom the company said was the architect of the fraud. Earlier this month, the company said it fired 12 other employees who, at the direction of Qian and Liu, participated in or had knowledge of the fabricated transactions.