Ondo founder's mother sues to remove CEO in fight for control

The estate of late Ondo Finance founder Nathan Allman has taken the tokenization firm’s current chief executive to court in Delaware over a legal ownership dispute. 

A disputed leadership handover has left the company with two rival power centers and the estate is asking a judge to decide who legally runs the company. Until a judge rules, the legal standing of the company’s contracts, spending and share issuance is in doubt.

Who are the two rivals aiming to run Ondo Finance?

Three complaints were filed on the 6th of August in Delaware’s Court of Chancery by Kathleen Allman, the mother of the late Nathan Allman, founder of Ondo Finance.

When Nathan Allman died in late May at 32, he held three roles at once: CEO, sole director and controlling shareholder, according to the complaint. 

His death froze the company. His voting shares passed into his estate, so no one had the authority to exercise them, and with the single board seat empty, there was no director left to appoint a successor or call a meeting. 

That deadlock continued until a Hawaii probate court made his mother administrator of the estate on June 26, handing her the voting power.

The estate is accusing Ian De Bode, Ondo’s former president, of using the gap before probate closed to install himself. According to the filings, De Bode took advantage of the bylaws to declare himself CEO, then leaned on a shareholder agreement to name himself sole director and started acting alone.

Kathleen Allman’s suit argues Ondo’s charter allowed the CEO vacancy to be filled only by a board decision, and since no board existed, De Bode’s appointment was void along with everything that followed. 

De Bode also allegedly leaned on corporate resources to pressure Kathleen into signing documents cementing his control, and he and Ondo’s outside lawyers refused her request for a shareholder list.

Did the Allman estate attempt to resolve its ownership dispute out of court? 

After gaining her voting rights, Allman did not immediately fire De Bode. She joined the board, put an interim operating policy in place to keep the business running, and kept De Bode on as president while asking for basic company records, all of which De Bode and Ondo’s counsel declined to recognize. 

De Bode has called Allman’s claims “meritless” and her decision to sue “regretful.” According to him, Ondo still has the backing of “key stakeholders, including its lead investors and the Ondo Foundation.”

The Ondo board said in a statement that it remains focused on serving users “without interruption” while it searches for a permanent successor. The company also recently named former Blockchain.com executive Adam Schlisman as its chief financial officer. 

Ondo, founded in 2021 and backed by Coinbase, Wintermute, Tiger Global and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, is leading the real-world asset market with about $3.5 billion in total value locked. 

It runs products including the OUSG tokenized Treasury fund and the yield-bearing USDY token, but following the news of the dispute, ONDO fell about 6% over 24 hours to $0.35. The company is currently trading at roughly 84% below its December 2024 record of $2.14. 

More than 10 million ONDO was reportedly moved onto exchanges as the news spread, with some transfers tied to Ondo team wallets, and put the two-day drop at around 9%.

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