https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2018/06/12/starkey-hearing-bill-austin/#5d7bc1653090
"While the legal drama has dragged on, Starkey has shown signs of slipping. At the VA, the company’s market share fell from 24% in 2014 to 16% in 2017, per an analyst at Bernstein Research. According to UBS surveys of over 2,600 audiologists taken between October 2016 and December 2017, Starkey’s hearing aids were the most frequently returned by customers.
More litigation could be coming. While Austin personally owns an estimated 93% of Starkey, the remaining 7% is owned by employees through an ESOP. Those employees might sue Austin and Ruzicka, who were the two trustees of the ESOP, claiming they damaged the value of the shares. “If I were an attorney trolling for clients, this would be an attractive one,” says Corey Rosen, founder of the National Center for Employee Ownership. No lawsuits appear to have been filed yet. Meanwhile, Ruzicka is not backing down. His attorney filed in April for a new trial, citing Austin’s “perjury” and prosecutorial misconduct.
Starkey has hired new execs, including a chief operations officer from GE Healthcare and a chief technology officer from Intel. They plan to release a new hearing-aid product line this summer that will use embedded sensors to track physical activities, much like a Fitbit. But as long as Sawalich is still leading the company and Austin is traveling the world, there’s nothing to keep history from repeating itself."
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