Ten days after Better Home & Finance Holding Company (NASDAQ: BETR) said founder Vishal Garg had “stepped down” as chief executive in an orderly handoff, Garg says he has lined up enough shareholder support to force his way back onto the board and retake the mortgage lender β a claim the company disputes, countering that he was “terminated” and should not be trusted with the job again.
The dispute marks a sharp escalation of a leadership change RealtyWire first reported on Aug. 3, 2026, when Better’s board named director Daniel Lewis interim CEO and said Garg would remain on the board to help with an “orderly transition.” At the time, both Garg and board chairman Harit Talwar issued supportive statements about the handoff.
Garg’s move
In an Aug. 13, 2026 release distributed on GlobeNewswire and issued under his own name as a “concerned shareholder,” Garg said he has retained attorney Alex Spiro and holds signed declarations from shareholders representing a majority of Better’s voting power. He said those declarations back a plan to reconstitute the board by demanding the resignation of every director except himself and two others he named, Michael Farello and Hugh Frater.
Garg said the underlying shareholder support documents have been kept confidential, available only to the company’s outside counsel on an “attorneys’-eyes-only” basis β meaning the scope of that support has not been independently verified.
Under Garg’s proposed plan, he said he would take $1 in salary until Better becomes profitable, personally invest $5 million in company stock through a 10b5-1 trading plan, and authorize a $30 million share buyback. He said he would also lead an independent search for a permanent CEO and, once a successor is in place, step into a chairman or chief product and innovation officer role rather than reclaim the CEO title himself.
To make his case for a return, Garg pointed to financial and operational gains he attributed to the turnaround he led before stepping down, citing revenue growth from roughly $20 million in the first quarter of 2024 to $54.7 million in the second quarter of 2026, funded loan volume rising from $600 million to $1.67 billion over that span, and the cost to produce a loan falling from about $12,000 to under $3,000 as the company scaled its Tinman AI technology. “Better is at an inflection point,” Garg said in the release. “I am prepared to work for $1 until we are profitable and finish the turnaround we started.”
Garg’s release said he could call a special shareholder meeting if the board does not voluntarily make the changes he’s demanding.
The board’s response
Better Home & Finance answered the next day, Aug. 14, with its own statement pushing back hard on Garg’s framing. The company referred to him as the “terminated CEO and current director,” saying the board β excluding Garg β voted unanimously to remove him over concerns about his judgment, temperament and credibility. “The Board is committed to acting in the best interest of all shareholders and will not be bullied into actions that they do not believe serve those interests,” the company said.
The board’s statement disputed Garg’s account of the company’s performance, citing cumulative GAAP net losses exceeding $1.5 billion since 2022 and a stock price decline of more than 90% during his tenure. It also said Garg had told the board the company would have been better off had capital it raised simply been invested in U.S. Treasury securities, and that he had refused to timely sign representation letters the company needed to file its most recent quarterly report. The board added that its counsel believes some of Garg’s communications “may constitute violations of U.S. securities laws,” though it did not detail those concerns further. The company told shareholders they do not need to take any action at this time.
What it means
Two facts aren’t in dispute: Garg has publicly moved to retake control of the company he founded, and the board has publicly refused to accept his characterization of the handoff or his fitness to return. Everything past that is a contest of narratives. Garg’s claim of majority shareholder backing is self-reported and unverified β the supporting declarations haven’t been made public β so it should be read as his camp’s position rather than a confirmed fact, and the same goes for the board’s more severe characterization of the events behind his exit, which had been described in softer terms just ten days earlier.
What to watch
Key signals ahead include whether Garg follows through on calling a special shareholder meeting, whether Better files its delayed Form 10-Q and what it says about the representation-letter dispute, and whether either side discloses more detail β through an SEC filing or otherwise β about the actual size of shareholder support on each side. Any litigation tied to the securities-law concerns the board raised would also mark a significant next step in the fight over Better’s leadership.
