Musk denies NYT report about premature layoffs to avoid severance pay

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
31 Oct 2022 12:29

An analyst claims Musk fired the top execs "for cause" to prohibit their unvested stock from vesting as the change of control takes place.

Elon Musk takes over Twitter (TechCrunch)

A New York Times report released on Saturday about laying off Twitter employees earlier than November 1 in an attempt to avoid stock grants due on that day had new owner Elon Musk tweeting: "This is false."

What a guy. @elonmusk is making sure to fire people at Twitter before part of their year-end compensation *kicks in on Tuesday.* https://t.co/sEclZozKV5 pic.twitter.com/inw3vF0kIL
— Eric Umansky (@ericuman) October 29, 2022

According to The New York Times report, Musk launched job cuts across the company, with layoffs taking place before the date when employees are scheduled to receive stock grants as part of their compensation.

This is fake – I did *not* tweet out a link to The New York Times! pic.twitter.com/d6V6m5ATW2
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 31, 2022

Twitter experienced an official takeover by self-named 'Chief Twit' after its top executives were fired on Thursday by the new owner, meaning the social media platform is now under the control of the world's richest man.

Chief executive Parag Agrawal, alongside Twitter's chief financial officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, were kicked to the curb, according to The Washington Post and CNBC reports, citing unidentified sources. The reports were published mere hours before the deadline appointed by the court for Musk to close in on the Twitter purchase deal.

Musk claimed that he was misled by Twitter over the fake "bot" accounts - a claim rejected by the company. According to research firm Equilar, the executives were to receive separation payouts totaling approximately $122 million.

LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield posted on Twitter Saturday, claiming that Musk fired the top execs "for cause" to prohibit their unvested stock from vesting as the change of control takes place.

Why is nobody writing about the fact that @elonmusk fired top Twitter execs “for cause,” preventing their unvested stock from vesting as part of a change of control@paraga @nedsegal & other top execs did an AMAZING job for shareholders holding Musk to $54.20 agreement he signed pic.twitter.com/1gEjAyN4xH
— Rich Greenfield, LightShed 🔦 (@RichLightShed) October 29, 2022

On Friday, Reuters was told by the director of research at Equilar, Courtney Yu, that fired execs Agrawal, Segal, and Gadde "should be getting these (severance) payments unless Elon Musk had cause for termination, with cause in these cases usually being that they broke the law or violated company policy."

Speaking of policies, under the pressure of public concerns that hateful content will increase on the platform under his leadership, Musk announced that a special unit for content moderation was created on Friday.

According to Musk in a recent tweet, a "better idea" for this would involve splitting the platform into different strands, in such a way that it would look similar to video game-style modes. This includes a "player versus player" version where verified accounts can participate in debates over specific tweet posts.