Founder and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, refutes claims in a New York Times report this weekend that he intends to lay off workers by Tuesday, November 1, thus cutting off stock grants to staff.
A tweet from ProPublica’s deputy managing editor, Eric Umansky, said Musk was firing Twitter employees before part of their year-end compensation kicks in on Tuesday, but Musk responded by saying: “This is false.” He did not clarify exactly what was false.
Musk may avoid paying stock grants by laying off workers before that date, according to the screenshot Umansky included in his tweet. Stock grants are a significant part of an employee’s salary.
According to TechCrunch, Musk did not respond to our request for clarification on whether stock compensation would be affected by layoffs. As far as the NYT article, Musk may very well have refuted the entire assertion, which claimed he ordered job cuts across the company, citing “four people who know about it.” But given the layoffs already underway, that seems unlikely.
When Musk visited Twitter headquarters last week, he said those previous reports were inaccurate. Musk said he planned to lay off 75% of the company’s staff. In spite of reports that Twitter is laying off its CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, General Counsel Sean Edgett, and Head of Legal Policy, Trust and Safety Vijaya Gadde, these layoffs do not appear to be taking place yet.
Musk completed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter last Thursday. In a surprise move, Twitter’s stock stopped trading on the New York Stock Exchange early Friday morning, after being listed there since 2013. November 8 will mark the official delisting of Twitter.
A $54.20 payment will be made to current shareholders, Musk’s purchase price. As Twitter becomes private, it’s unclear how stock grants will be affected.