Empery Board Sweeps Contested Election; ATG Files New Delaware Suit to Unseat Ian Read
EMPD is trading near its 52-week low of $2.484 (9.9% above the low).
Summary
Empery's full board slate survived the October 14 shareholder vote, but nearly half of votes cast were withheld from some directors and shareholders rejected the company's equity incentive plan. ATG Capital has now filed a new Delaware Section 225 action to strip Ian Read of his seat.
Key Events · Corporate Governance and Compliance · EMPD
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Company Slate Wins Contested Election
All nine Empery nominees were elected at the October 14 annual meeting; ATG's Elbaor, Gliksberg and Kirshenbaum were defeated. Aaron Morris, nominated by ATG, was elected on the company slate.
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Directors Won With Heavy Opposition
Rohan Chauhan received 16,286,710 for and 9,396,502 withheld; Ryan Lane 15,132,809 for and 10,553,780 withheld; Ian Read 13,968,450 for and 11,718,139 withheld — roughly 45% of votes cast against Read.
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Equity Incentive Plan Voted Down
Shareholders rejected the 2025 Equity Incentive Plan and its 6,846,589 reserved shares: 8,897,192 for, 11,798,429 against, 4,991,973 abstain.
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ATG Files New Section 225 Action
On October 16, 2026 ATG Capital petitioned a Delaware court to sterilize Empery Asset Management votes in order to remove Ian Read and replace him with Gabriel Gliksberg.
Analysis · EMPD · Crypto Assets
The proxy fight is not over. Empery's nine nominees all won on October 14, but the margins were ugly: Rohan Chauhan drew 9.4M withheld votes against 16.3M for, Ryan Lane 10.6M withheld, and Ian Read survived with only 13.97M for versus 11.72M withheld — roughly 45% of votes cast against him. ATG's three nominees lost, but its fourth, Aaron Morris, was elected on the company slate. Two days later ATG opened a fresh Section 225 action asking a Delaware court to sterilize Empery Asset Management's votes specifically to remove Read and install Gabriel Gliksberg. That means the board composition remains litigable even after a certified vote, and the company is still burning cash on litigation — $22.5M in proxy costs was previously disclosed. Shareholders also rejected the 2025 Equity Incentive Plan outright (11.8M against vs 8.9M for), a rebuke that leaves management without the equity pool it sought to compensate directors and employees. For a $77M-market-cap bitcoin holder already carrying an $85.4M quarterly loss, continued governance churn and legal spend are a real drag on any effort to close the NAV gap through buybacks.
How filings like this one have moved
In the 30 days to Oct 19, 2026, 37.9% of the 895 measured filings Wiseek scored 8 moved their stock by 5% or more by the next session's close. The median move was -0.87%. These are measured outcomes after filings of this importance, not a forecast for this one.
Measured one observation per ticker per day, after exclusions. Current figures: Filing Impact Tracker · open dataset
At the time of this filing, EMPD was trading at $2.73 on NASDAQ in the Crypto Assets sector, with a market capitalization of approximately $76.9M. The 52-week trading range was $2.48 to $7.35. This filing was assessed with negative market sentiment and an importance score of 8 out of 10.