Elon Musk, the new owner of Twitter, has refuted a New York Times claim that he plans to lay off Twitter staff before November 1 in order to avoid stock grants due on that date.
Musk responded to a Twitter user who inquired about layoffs by tweeting, “This is incorrect.”
The New York Times claimed on Saturday that Musk has ordered company-wide job cuts, with certain teams to be reduced more than others, and that layoffs will occur prior to November 1, when staff are slated to get stock awards as part of their remuneration.
The Times reported that the layoffs might begin as early as Saturday, citing unnamed sources with knowledge of the subject.
According to media reports published on Saturday, Musk sacked top executives in an effort to avoid paying out huge severance packages, and was planning other layoffs for the same day.
According to Reuters, Musk sacked Twitter’s chief executive Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy leader Vijaya Gadde after completing a $44 billion takeover of the social media network on Thursday.
Regarding the quantity of phony accounts on the network, he accused them of misleading him and Twitter’s investors. According to the research firm Equilar, the CEO compensation would total almost $122 million.
The Information stated, citing unidentified sources with knowledge of the situation, that Elon Musk fired four top Twitter executives, including Agrawal and Segal, “for cause” in an apparent attempt to avoid severance compensation and unvested stock awards.
Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed, tweeted on Saturday that Musk fired top Twitter executives “for cause,” preventing their unvested stock from vesting as a result of a change in ownership.
Twitter did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment immediately.
Reuters was unable to immediately reach the terminated executives.
Courtney Yu, director of research at Equilar, told Reuters on Friday that the terminated executives “should be receiving these (severance) payments unless Elon Musk had cause for termination, which in these circumstances is typically because they violated the law or company policy.”
