Elon Musk fired top Twitter executives “for cause” in an attempt to avoid hefty severance payouts in the wake of his takeover of Twitter, The Information reported on Saturday.
Musk removed Parag Agrawal, the CEO of Twitter; Ned Segal, the chief financial officer; Vijaya Gadde, the legal chief; and Sean Edgett, the general counsel, on Thursday after closing his $44 billion deal.
A person familiar with the matter told The Information that Musk dismissed the executives “for cause” to try to avoid severance payouts and unvested stock awards, suggesting he had justification for their termination. Two people with knowledge of the subject told The New York Times the executives were now considering their options.
The former executives were in line for payouts totalling almost $90 million, with Agrawal set for $38.7 million, largely due to shares vested since his departure. The research firm Equilar told Reuters the payouts could go as high as $122 million.
Equilar’s research director, Courtney Yu, told Reuters on Friday that the executives “should be getting these payments unless Elon Musk had cause for termination, with cause in these cases usually being that they broke the law or violated company policy.”
Musk repeatedly lambasted Twitter’s operations and their executives in the months before closing his deal over the number of fake accounts. His relationship with Agrawal in particular quickly soured, with the pair trading blows on Twitter and over text messages.
The Tesla CEO has wasted no time in reforming Twitter. Insider reported on Saturday that team leaders and VPs had begun drawing up lists of who to keep on based on performance reviews.
The new owner of Twitter, who is naming himself as CEO on internal company files, per Insider, also had to deny reports that he was planning to lay off 75% of the workforce.
Musk is expected to make more layoffs quickly because of a November 1 deadline when employees are scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation in mind, per The New York Times. These are a significant proportion of most Twitter employees’ compensation, the newspaper reported.
