Twitter Boss Gifts Shares Worth £130m To Staff

Twitter (Xetra: A1W6XZ - news) 's chief executive is handing staff a third of his own holding in the social network worth almost £130m.

Jack Dorsey used his Twitter account to announce the move, saying: "'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."

It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) does not mean the company's 4,000 workers will share the same amount of shares.

It makes the stake available for awards such as bonuses or signing-on incentives.

He announced the scheme just days after making 8% of the company's workforce, 336 people, redundant as part of a drive to slash costs .

Engineers were worst affected.

Reaction to the share awards - on Twitter (Swiss: TWTR.SW - news) - ranged from messages of thanks to claims they amounted to a cynical ploy.

One user, @schwa, tweeted Dorsey to say: "hey just after your lay offs. How coincidental. It's almost as if you might be trying to fix a morale problem?!?

Dorsey himself added: "I'd rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small. I'm confident we can make Twitter big!"

He returned to the top role in July after the departure of Dick Costolo who had lost confidence of investors worried about slow user growth and continued financial losses.

In the nine years since Dorsey co-founded the short messaging service, Twitter has lost nearly $2bn (£1.3bn).

Dr Sotirios Paroutis, associate professor of strategic management at Warwick Business School, said: "After the stick, we now have the carrot.

"After the decision to lay off 8% of staff last week, Jack Dorsey now sends a motivational signal inside the firm that he is also taking steps to retain Twitter’s talent pool.

"It also sends a signal to investors that he is prepared to take bold decisions to make sure Twitter keeps up the pace with its innovations to market."