VanEck criticizes Metaplanet over executive dilution despite compensation cuts
VanEck criticized Metaplanet’s executive compensation as poorly aligned with shareholders, rating it “Bad” in a review of the 10 largest digital asset treasury companies. It said Metaplanet’s equity plan equals 14.7% of fully diluted shares and officer exposure is 8.2%, far above peers and much higher than Strategy’s 2% and 0.5%, respectively. The main issue was an automatic adjustment clause that expanded Metaplanet’s option pool as it issued shares to buy Bitcoin, growing the pool from 46 million to 319.5 million shares. Metaplanet ended the mechanism in August and reduced the pool by 41% in September, but VanEck said that still does not go far enough. It urged Metaplanet to reverse the expansion, use shareholder-approved compensation, tie pay to Bitcoin per fully diluted share, and adopt a written grant-timing policy.
