The co-founders of the Fisker Group, Henrik Fisker and Geeta Gupta-Fisker, are taking a pretty sizable pay cut as their electric vehicle startup moves through bankruptcy proceedings.
John C. Didonato, Fisker’s chief restructuring officer, said in a Tuesday court filing that the couple would be reducing their annual salary to $1 to help the failed company pay its bills and serve shareholders. The decision was made on July 8, according to the filing.
The couple were paid $62,400 each in 2022, the last year Fisker filed a proxy statement for, as the CEO and CFO, respectively. Both executives took home a $710,000 bonus that year. Henrik Fisker earned more than 6.6 times as much as the median Fisker employee in 2022. As of March, they each own 843,843 company shares, giving them a majority of voting control.
On July 3, a lawyer for the office of the U.S. Trustee asked Didonato whether the Fiskers were still on the payroll, TechCrunch reports. Didonato said their salaries were “undertaking a modification” and possibly “some deferrals” at the time. It’s unclear how much they made in 2023 or in the weeks leading up to Fisker’s eventual filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month.
Fisker will defer “certain severance payments, certain employee healthcare benefits, and vehicle sale incentive bonuses,” Didonato added in Tuesday’s filing. The company is required to dole out about $964,000 next week to pay its remaining roughly 130 employees. Fisker employed 1,300 people last September.
The automaker has asked a Delaware Bankruptcy Court to let it sell its remaining 3,312 Ocean electric SUVs to car leasing firm American Lease for about $14,000 each, or $46 million. The Ocean Extreme, a high-end model, cost $61,449 in June 2023, when it went on sale.
But Fisker is having some new issues with the Ocean.
The company has issued a stop-sale notice to dealers in the U.S., Canada, and the European Union for the Ocean over a water pump issue. A recall affects 7,545 vehicles sold in the U.S., according to regulators. The SUV has been the source of more than 100 complaints filed with U.S. regulators, with owners reporting their vehicles suddenly losing power and seeing their cars’ front hoods flying up when driving at high speeds.