According to research company Equilar, three top Twitter Inc. employees who were let go by new owner Elon Musk stand to receive severance payments totaling around $122 million.
According to those familiar with the situation, Musk dismissed Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and head of law and policy Vijaya Gadde. He had claimed that they had misled him and Twitter’s investors over the prevalence of fraudulent accounts on the site.
Agrawal’s so-called “golden parachute” was estimated at $57.4 million by executive compensation research firm Equilar in an email to Reuters, Segal’s at $44.5 million, and Gadde’s at $20 million.
No one from Twitter responded to inquiries.
In addition to those payments, Musk will also give the three executives $65 million in exchange for the shares they previously owned in the business that he is now taking private.
The largest interest, owned by Gadde, was worth $34.8 million based on the final sale price of $54.20 a share, followed by Segal’s holding worth $22 million and Agrawal’s stake worth $8.4 million.
Agrawal, who had previously served as Twitter’s CTO, was appointed CEO in November. According to a Twitter securities report, the majority of his $30.4 million total remuneration for 2021 came through stock awards.
Although they can be contentious, large executive compensation packages linked to changes in ownership of a company are typical to facilitate ownership transitions.
Payments made during a change in control event “maximize stockholder value and sustain executive focus,” according to Twitter’s statement.
According to the petition, payments would comprise accelerated stock award vesting, healthcare costs, and 100% of an executive’s yearly base income.
The ousted Twitter executives “should be collecting these payouts unless Elon Musk had cause for termination, with the cause in these circumstances typically being that they disobeyed the law or violated business policy,” according to Courtney Yu, director of research at Equilar.
