Vishal Garg, founder and former chief executive of Better Home & Finance, extended his Better consent solicitation deadline to 2 October on 18 September, his third extension, and named three independent director candidates the same morning. Better’s special committee responded with its own release calling the effort a failed revenge campaign and urging him to end it.

Where the Better consent solicitation stands

Garg is soliciting written consents to remove five directors: interim chief executive Daniel Lewis, Harit Talwar, Arnaud Massenet, Bhaskar Menon and Prabhu Narasimhan. Removing them would clear the way for him to play what he calls a meaningful role at the company he founded twelve years ago.

The sequence is the problem. Garg claimed several weeks ago that he had secured support from a majority of the company’s voting power and was prepared to deliver evidence of it. He then set a deadline of 8 September, missed it, moved to 18 September, and has now moved again to 2 October. Better says he has failed to demonstrate almost any support from public shareholders beyond a few longtime allies, despite the head start provided by his super-voting stock.

The director slate is stronger than the campaign

The three candidates are more credible than the campaign around them. Bing Gordon spent more than 25 years as a partner and chief product officer at Kleiner Perkins, sat on Amazon’s board from 2003 to 2018, co-founded Electronic Arts, and currently serves on the boards of Duolingo and Take-Two Interactive. David Heidecorn is a senior advisor to L Catterton after two decades as partner and chief risk officer, and previously led the restructuring group at GE Capital. Steve Sarracino founded Activant Capital, one of Better’s largest investors, and sat on Better’s board from 2019 to 2024 as chair of the audit committee.

Gordon and Sarracino already hold Better stock, and Garg says Heidecorn would become a shareholder after joining. Garg has also committed to retaining a search firm for additional directors on day one and starting a formal chief executive search through Daversa Partners.

Sarracino is the interesting name. A former audit committee chair knows where the accounting and disclosure problems are, which is a different kind of threat to a sitting board than an outside activist with a deck. Had Garg led with this slate in August rather than with claims of support he could not document, this would read as a different fight.

Why the missed deadlines are doing the board’s work

When your central claim is that you already hold the votes, failing three times to produce them is not a procedural delay. It is the argument collapsing in public, and it hands the board its best line for free. The Better consent solicitation has now spent more time being extended than it spent gathering support.

The super-voting stock makes it worse rather than better. It means Garg started closer to the threshold than any ordinary activist could and still has not reached it, which invites the conclusion that public shareholders are actively declining rather than merely slow to respond. Both Institutional Shareholder Services and Glass Lewis have recommended shareholders back the current board and reject the green consent card. Egan-Jones went the other way and recommended shareholders support Garg’s proposals, but two of the three major advisers are against him.

Garg’s own note contains an admission that undercuts the campaign. The three candidates have expressed willingness to serve but no agreement has been reached with them, and a successful solicitation would not automatically appoint them. They would be nominated by Garg and would still need approval from a majority of whatever board exists at that point. Shareholders are being asked to remove five directors on the strength of three names that are not contractually committed.

The governance fight is a symptom

None of this means the board is in good shape. Better is running on an interim chief executive, its founder is calling employees and demanding they pledge loyalty and hand over information, and the company is spending shareholder money on a consent fight rather than on originations.

This is a lender that funded more than $110 billion in loans and went public through a SPAC at a valuation nobody now defends. It has been trying to rebuild around its AI platform and home equity products, including rebate arrangements with crypto partners that read as distribution experiments rather than a strategy. A business in that position needs management attention, and it is getting a proxy war instead. For a lender, the cost of that distraction shows up in funding terms, and the true cost of capital is unforgiving of companies that look unstable.

Why 2 October settles the Better consent solicitation

2 October is the next date, and it is the one that settles this. If Garg misses a fourth deadline the campaign is finished in everything but name, and the special committee will have won by simply continuing to exist. If he delivers consents representing genuine public shareholder support, the ISS and Glass Lewis recommendations become the story, because it would mean retail and institutional holders split decisively from the advisers.

The quieter thing to watch is the permanent chief executive search. Both sides say they want one. Whoever announces a credible candidate first takes the strongest argument away from the other.

Source: Business Wire, 18 September 2026, and the SEC consent solicitation filings.