Twitter boss Jack Dorsey gives away $200 million shares to employees in 'project morale boost'
Twitter founder Jack Dorsey has given a $200 million (£130 million) boost to staff morale with a huge shares giveaway a week after announcing plans to axe hundreds of jobs.
In a move dubbed “project morale boost” by some on the microblogging site, the chief executive tweeted: “I’m giving 1/3rd of my Twitter stock (exactly 1% of the company) to our employee-equity pool to reinvest directly in our people.”
Dorsey added: “I’d rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small.”
His tweet came little more than a week after it emerged 336 employees, or 8% of Twitter’s workforce, will be made redundant as part of Dorsey’s cost-savings plan.
The cuts followed the 38-year-old's reappointment as chief executive earlier this month.
Dorsey, who founded Twitter with Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass in 2006, first held the position between May 2007 and October 2008 but was ousted over concerns of a lack of focus.
He remains the boss of of Square - a mobile payments company he launched in 2009 - which is reportedly planning a stock market float.
