According to Twitter’s SEC filing, the new owner of the microblogging & social media platform, Elon Musk is entitled to pay over $100 million in severance and other payouts (such as unvested shares) to CEO Parag Agarwal, Policy Chief Vijaya Gadde and other two executives who have been fired just after Musk took over Twitter at a massive amount of USD 44 Billion. 

However, in a recent development, it appears that Musk has found a way to circumvent these payouts. In a recent report, The Information stated that Musk terminated top Twitter executives “for cause” in an effort to avoid severance pay and unvested stock awards.

Highlights

  • “For Cause” or “Just Cause” Clause in the Employment Agreement may be used in a tricky was for termination of the top Twitter executives 
  • To circumvent unvested stock awards and severance pay these executives were fired before November 1
  • If reports are considered to be true, then Elon Musk may invite another legal case on certain hidden secrets that were not revealed to Elon Musk before the acquisition. This may be liable for a legal action

On Saturday, in a tweet Rich Greenfield, a LightShed analyst said that Musk fired top Twitter executives “for cause” to prevent their unvested shares from vesting as part of a change of control.

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In response, Musk has denied these allegations by tweeting “This is False”. However, reports suggest that he might have fired more Twitter employees before November 1st to avoid paying them severance and their unvested stock awards.

Musk Hasn’t Been Liked by Twitter’s Top Executives

Musk has been critical of Twitter’s top management ever since the deal between both parties started in April 2022. Reports also suggest that Jack Dorsey, Parag Agarwal, Vijaya Gadde behaved very rude with Elon Musk in their previous interaction through email and via Tweets. Now that, Elon Musk has found a loophole in the policy allegedly to refuse to pay the severance and other payouts. In case that happens, there are high chances of another court case, exactly like what happened previously when Musk withdrew his agreement to buy Twitter and later the company dragged him to court. Just when the trial approached, Musk changed his mind again and told the court of buying Twitter at $44 billion instead of going ahead with a court trial.

Monthly Fee For Bluetick Accounts

In a recently published news by Red Newswire, it was reported that Elon Musk has also taken the decision to charge a monthly fee of $20 for all users who run verified accounts on Twitter with the blue tick. It has been duly reported yesterday that the staff at Twitter have been asked to work day and night to implement the new monthly pay structure. Business experts said that the monthly charge policy is a good move from revenue perspective with millions of users wanting the bluetick.

Massive Decline in Twitter’s Complaints

After Elon Musk became the boss at Twitter describing himself as the “Chief Twit”, he has been continuously taking quick and tough decisions on policies, human resources and legal aspects related to the newly owned company. It’s said that there has been a decline of 85% in monthly complaints by Twitter users. Musk has been very vocal about millions of fake accounts and bots on Twitter much before his take over of Twitter.

Featured Image Credit: SkyNews

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