Jack Dorsey gives staff a third of his Twitter shares following on the heels of hundreds of lay-offs
Jack Dorsey has told Twitter employees that he will give them a third of his shares in the company in move widely seen as intended to boost morale in the business following hundreds of staff lay-offs earlier this month.
The Twitter chief executive will give away stock worth around $197m (£128m) to employees, which would mean the 3700 staff would own 1 per cent of the company.
Dorsey said in a tweet that the move was part of his plan to “reinvest directly in our people”.
The 38 year-old co-founder’s shares will go into a pool from which staff are rewarded with stock depending on performance. Distributed evenly, the shares would equate to around $55,000 worth of stock per person.
He followed the announcement up with another tweet saying that he would rather “have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small”.
It’s been an eventful month for the company following Dorsey’s appointment, although not all news has been good. Last week, Dorsey announced that Twitter would cut 336 employees - around 8 per cent of staff - in one of his first moves as chief executive. Twitter executives appointed Dorsey in the belief that he could help revive the social media platform’s stagnant user base. One of the first steps towards this goal came with the introduction of ‘Moments’ which has been created with new users in mind.
Dorsey’s appointment appears to have generated a spurt of renewed faith in the company which is evident in former Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer’s decision to buy a 4 per cent stake in Twitter last week.