City profile

Elizabeth Holmes In her heyday, she was dubbed “The Next Steve Jobs”, said Reed Abelson in The New York Times. But Elizabeth Holmes’ dreams of “revolutionising healthcare” are at an end. The disgraced founder of Theranos and Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, its former president, have been indicted on charges of wire fraud. If convicted, they could face decades in prison. Theranos was once valued at nearly $10bn, said Vanity Fair – before an exposé by journalist John Carreyrou revealed its blood-testing technology to be an elaborate fraud. Holmes, 34, has previously settled a civil suit, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused her and Theranos of obtaining $700m in investment by making exaggerated or false statements about the firm. Theranos has now been plunged into bankruptcy. The charismatic Holmes founded Theranos in 2003 as a 19-year-old Stanford University dropout, and quickly attracted a board that included two senators and two former US secretaries of state, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger. Backers included Rupert Murdoch and the Walton family, of Walmart fame. “The concept was irresistible,” said The New York Times. Theranos claimed it could take a few drops of blood from a simple finger prick to detect diseases from HIV to diabetes. Holmes drafted “a spellbinding sales pitch” and “relentlessly pursued anyone” – including her own employees – who doubted her. She was “deeply self-deluded by her optimism and faith in herself”, said tech consultant Paul Saffo. “And delusion is contagious.”