The CEO Who Fired 900 People on a Three-Minute Zoom Call Has Now Been Fired Himself — And He Wants the Job Back

Vishal Garg, the mortgage executive who became a global symbol of corporate callousness after firing roughly 900 employees on a three-minute Zoom call weeks before Christmas in 2021, has been removed as chief executive of the company he founded — and is now waging a public campaign to take it back.

Better Home & Finance Holding Company announced on 3 August 2026 that Garg had "mutually agreed with the Board to transition from his role as Chief Executive Officer." Daniel Lewis, an activist investor who had joined Better's board just seven days earlier, was named interim CEO effective immediately. The Form 8-K filed the next day said Garg "stepped down." Shares closed the following session down 36.7%.

Eleven days later, that account collapsed.

On 14 August, Better issued a statement headlined "Better Home & Finance Holding Company Responds to Terminated CEO Vishal Garg's Latest Attempt to Gain Control of the Company." The board, it said, had voted unanimously — every director except Garg — to terminate him following "a series of decisions and actions that raised serious concerns regarding his judgment, temperament and credibility."

The statement went considerably further. The board said Garg had "refused to timely execute mandatory representation letters required for the Company to file its Form 10-Q, seemingly in an effort to extract self-serving concessions." And it said it had "reviewed communications that, based on counsel's analysis, evidence Mr. Garg's direct involvement in conduct that counsel believes may constitute violations of U.S. securities laws."

No specifics were provided. No lawsuit or arbitration had been filed by either side as of mid-August, and the allegations remain untested.

Garg is not going quietly. On 10 August he sent the board a letter through counsel demanding reinstatement. On 13 August he issued his own press release announcing he had retained Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel — the litigator best known for representing Elon Musk and Jay-Z — and had obtained "signed declarations from shareholders representing a majority of the Company's voting power." He demanded that five of the seven other directors resign, keeping only himself, Michael Farello and Hugh Frater, and threatened to call a special meeting of stockholders if they refused.

His offer: work for $1 until Better is profitable, invest $5 million of his own money through a 10b5-1 plan, run a $30 million share buyback, and sell the company's UK banking business. "Once that work is complete, the Board should select the best long-term CEO for Better and I will move into a role where I can continue driving product and innovation," he said in the release.

His explanation of how he lost the job is about betrayal — and it is aimed squarely at Lewis, not the board. Lewis "hoodwinked me," Garg told CNN. "He said he liked the company's strategy. He praised us on X and used that to get on our board and win our confidences." He added: "I suspect he always wanted to become CEO. The board made a mistake."

Five days before he lost his job, Garg had publicly welcomed Lewis to the board, praising a man who had "spent his career helping companies sharpen their strategy, improve capital allocation, and create long-term shareholder value."

What has made the story travel far beyond the mortgage trade press is what happened on 1 December 2021.

That afternoon, Garg opened a Zoom call with roughly 900 employees across the United States and India. "I come to you with not great news," he began. About three minutes later: "If you're on this call, you are part of the unlucky group that is being laid off. Your employment here is terminated effective immediately."

He told the call the company was cutting "about 15 percent" — the actual figure was around 9% of a workforce of roughly 10,000. "This is the second time in my career I'm doing this, and I do not want to do this," he said. "The last time I did it I cried. Um, this time, I hope to be stronger."

The layoffs came one day after Better announced a $750 million cash infusion from SoftBank and its SPAC partners, and weeks before Christmas. A recording leaked within hours and the clip circulated worldwide.

The following day, Garg posted on the anonymous workplace app Blind — where he was not anonymous — accusing the people he had just fired of fraud. "You guys know that at least 250 of the people terminated were working an average of 2 hours a day while clocking in 8 hours+ a day in the payroll system?" he wrote. "They were stealing from you and stealing from our customers who pay the bills that pay our bills. Get educated."

Three communications and marketing leaders resigned that week. On 7 December, Garg apologised to remaining staff for "blundering the execution" of the layoffs. On 10 December he took leave "effective immediately" while the board commissioned an independent review of leadership and culture, with CFO Kevin Ryan running the company.

He was back on 18 January 2022. The board said it was "confident in Vishal and in the changes he is committed to making to provide the type of leadership, focus and vision that Better needs at this pivotal time." Two directors resigned that month. Garg had been away five weeks, during which he worked with an executive coach; the company rolled out respectful-workplace training for everyone else.

The four and a half years since have been brutal for the business.

Better was valued at $7.7 billion when its SPAC merger with Aurora Acquisition Corp. was announced in May 2021. By the time the deal finally closed in August 2023, some 95% of Aurora's shareholders had redeemed. The stock fell 93% on its first day of trading. A 1-for-50 reverse split followed in August 2024 to keep it listed on Nasdaq.

Funded loan volume peaked at $58 billion in 2021, collapsed to $3.0 billion in 2023, and has recovered to $4.7 billion in 2025 — still roughly 92% below peak. Headcount fell from about 10,000 at the end of 2021 to 820 by the end of 2023, before rebuilding to 1,329. Roughly 3,000 more jobs went in March 2022, with some employees learning of their dismissal when severance appeared in the payroll app before anyone told them.

In its 14 August statement, the board cited "cumulative GAAP net losses exceeding $1.5 billion since 2022 and a stock price that had declined more than 90%" under Garg's leadership. It also cited his own concession that the capital raised under him would have done better in U.S. Treasury securities.

Garg does not dispute the arithmetic. He told HousingWire that every mortgage company suffered in the same rate environment, so "any money spent by any of these companies would have been better invested in Treasurys, which is a fact." He added: "We lost a billion dollars in the last five years — we did. And yes, if the investors put it elsewhere, they would have made more money. That's correct. But that doesn't mean the future is not bright."

His case is that the turnaround was nearly done. "We're winning. We've tripled loan volume. We're close to profitability," he said. "We were at the 5-yard line after taking the ball all the way down the field from the other side."

The second-quarter numbers released alongside his exit show a company growing but still losing money: $1.67 billion in funded volume, up 38% year on year; revenue of $54.7 million, up 28%; a net loss of $30.6 million; and $102.3 million in cash. Better had guided to adjusted-EBITDA breakeven by the end of the third quarter after eleven consecutive quarters of losses. Lewis withdrew that guidance on day one. "We are not going to anchor the company to a specific month for becoming cash flow positive," he said, while raising the annualised cost-cutting target from $25 million to $45 million.

Whether Garg can actually force his way back is unresolved.

An SEC filing on 14 August disclosed that Garg, investor Steven Sarracino's Activant Ventures entities and Tony Bobulinski's Global Investment Ventures may be deemed a group holding about 26.8% of Better's Class A shares, and that they expect to keep pressing the board on its composition and on the choice of CEO. That is a Class A figure, not total voting power. Garg's claim to a voting majority depends on Better's three-class structure — Class B shares carry three votes each — plus declarations from holders who have not been publicly named and which no third party has verified.

The board's position is that it "will not be bullied into actions that they do not believe serve" shareholder interests, and that "shareholders do not need to take any action at this time."

This is not Garg's first regulatory brush. The SEC opened an investigation into Better and Aurora in 2022 following a lawsuit by former sales chief Sarah Pierce alleging the company misled investors ahead of the SPAC; the agency closed it in August 2023 without recommending enforcement, and the Pierce case settled in 2024. Since the August 2026 announcements, at least four plaintiffs' firms have announced investigations of the company — solicitations, not filed cases.

BETR closed at $13.73 on 14 August, down 8.5% on the day, near the bottom of a 52-week range of $13.46 to $94.06. The company is worth about $261 million.

Garg, for his part, has adopted an unusually reflective register for a man in a proxy fight. "It's not about me," he said. "So when shareholders said, 'You need to take a back seat,' I complied."

And: "It's an acknowledgment that I've been doing this for 10 years, but execution hasn't been perfect. I hope it gets resolved."