He fired CEO Parag Agrawal, head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde, and chief financial officer Ned Segal. According to Twitter’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk will have to pay the three more than $204 million, MarketWatch reported.
Musk is set to become Twitter’s next CEO. Agrawal had been the social networking site’s CEO since November 2021.
The three executives own roughly 1.2 million shares of Twitter—amounting to about $65 million. More than half—$34.8 million—is owned by Gadde, Bloomberg reported.
In the takeover agreement, according to MarketWatch, there is also a clause that provided accelerated vesting of promised future stock compensation called “Golden Parachute Compensation,” which will see the three automatically vest stock worth $119.6 million as severance if terminated. The largest payout would be going to Agrawal at $56 million.
The three executives are also entitled to a year’s salary and health benefits. Agrawal had a based pay of $623,000 in 2021 and Segal and Gadde were on $600,000 each.
Gadde is set to leave Twitter with nearly $74 million, according to MarketWatch, and Agrawal and Segal are to walk away with roughly $65 million and $66 million, respectively.
Twitter is yet to come out with a statement on the board shakeup.
The CEO of electric car maker Tesla and the world’s richest man tweeted out “the bird is freed” on Thursday evening, seemingly a nod to his pledge to make the platform more open for free speech. Musk is estimated to be worth $221.3 billion, according to the Forbes Billionaires Rich List.
Musk is expected to reverse lifetime bans on some users, including former President Donald Trump. Trump was permanently suspended from the platform after the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C, “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Trump supporters on Twitter applauded the firing of Gadde on Thursday, who one account said was “chief of account banning and censorship.”
Musk has suggested that Twitter could move towards a subscription-based model and shift away from the advertising that pays for 90 percent of its revenue.
Newsweek has contacted Twitter for comment.
The $44 billion Twitter takeover deal closed on Thursday, a day before the deadline. The deal near fell through in July, after Musk tried to withdraw his offer after he accused Twitter bosses of refusing to divulge details about the number of spam bots on the site, which he believed were more than human users.
