Twitter chief executive and co-founder Jack Dorsey has said he is giving a third of his stock in the company, about one per cent, to the employee equity pool.
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The giveaway is worth just under 200 million U.S. dollars (£128 million) and will be distributed based on staff performance.
Notwithstanding the announcement by the CEO of Twitter, company shareholders still have to approve the equity incentive plan which will begin transferring the shares to employees in 2016.
He cautioned the extra stock would not take the place of Twitter fixing the company’s business model, and if the shares decline, the gesture could fall flat. By comparison, Facebook’s social networking service has 1.5 billion users, even though it is only two years older than Twitter.
Dorsey was only named permanent Twitter CEO earlier this month after a long, speculative search and vetting process. Dorsey recently donated 20% of his stake in the company – about 15 million shares – to a foundation he set up that will use the money to help artists and other creative professionals. Dorsey seems intent in driving his team to rapidly break the product drought that is holding Twitter Inc (NASDAQ:TWTR) back.
Dorsey announced the news on Twitter, as well as at the company’s “Teatime” town hall event. Regarding the return of Dorsey as CEO of Twitter, “I had a few faith that they absolutely could have the right guy come in as CEO”, Ballmer said in an October 23 interview with Bloomberg. Since his appointment as full-time CEO earlier this month, Dorsey, who also heads the mobile payments startup Square, has had his hands full.
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Dorsey is the eighth largest owner of the company, with a 3.2 per cent stake worth $637m. Jack Dorsey’s and Apple’s recent decisions are rare exceptions.
