The CEO who filed a lawsuit against his company:
The lawsuit was filed by an employee of Better.com against the company and its CEO, Vishal Garg. The former employee claims the company made deceptive statements to investors regarding the company's financial prospects and performance. Vishal Garg made headlines a year ago when he fired 900 employees over a Zoom call. Before leaving Better.com earlier this year, Sarah Pierce worked as executive vice president of customer experience, sales, and operations. It was unclear at the time whether she resigned freely or was asked to quit, but Pierce claims in her lawsuit that she was driven out. A $7.7 billion merger between Better.com and Aurora Acquisition Corp, a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC), was agreed to last year but has yet to be finalized. During the pandemic, SPAC acquisitions were one of the hottest investment trends as early-stage firms sought to go public.
Misinformation that brought the fire:
Pierce claims that she was fired from her job in February as a result of voicing concerns about the sale, according to the lawsuit. She's looking for monetary compensation. According to reports, Garg is accused of directing the faltering lender's bid to combine with a special-purpose acquisition company or SPAC. Garg had accused some of the dismissed staff of "stealing" from the firm by being unproductive after his well-publicized mass dismissal on a video conference call in December. Pierce claims she pressed the firm to issue a statement addressing Garg's "misinformation" about the fired workers and approached him directly, stating that she "would not assist his false narrative." This isn't the first time a female executive has accused the corporation of inappropriate behaviour, according to Forbes. Following claims of bullying and other workplace concerns, the business placed former chief product officer Elana Kollner on administrative leave in April 2021. Throughout the last six months, the organization has made significant headlines. Better.com let off roughly 900 employees through a Zoom video conference that went viral on December 1, 2021. It wasn't the first corporation to fire employees because of a global epidemic caused by the Covid-19 virus. But it was the way it was handled that enraged so many people. In a regulatory statement, Better stated that its fourth-quarter net losses in FY may approach $182 million. In March, the business let off roughly 3,000 employees in the United States and India, citing higher interest rates as a factor limiting the flow of new loans.
The company lost a humongous amount because of the CEO:
Garg, the co-founder, was widely chastised for his cold and callous attitude. He added insult to injury by publicly accusing impacted employees of "stealing from their colleagues and customers by being unproductive" a few days later. Furthermore, CFO Kevin Ryan had just written an email to staff the day before, stating that the business would have $1 billion on its financial sheet by the end of the week. Garg apologized for the layoffs and took a month-long break afterwards. Meanwhile, staff said he was "driven by terror", and many top executives and two board members quit as a result. Better.com lost more than $300 million last year, according to a filing from April, a dramatic contrast from their lucrative 2020. PIMCO, Goldman Sachs, and other investors have sued Garg and the corporations he controlled in several cases.
