Parag Agrawal likely to receive $42 million following exit from Twitter: Report
Billionaire Elon Musk on Friday after completing his $44 billion deal to take over Twitter fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.
However, the top executive will not be leaving empty-handed, said reports. As a part of the deal, Agrawal will vest 100% of his unvested equity awards, reported Bloomberg.
According to research firm Equilar, this means that he will make an estimated $42 million, reported Reuters. The estimate includes a year’s worth of Parag’s base salary plus accelerated vesting of all equity awards. In 2021, Agrawal’s total compensation was $30.4 million, when he was the chief technology officer, according to Twitter’s proxy. As the CEO, Agrawal’s salary was reported to be $1 million annually.
Parag Agrawal took over the Twitter CEO role in November last year after co-founder Jack Dorsey unexpectedly resigned. Agrawal’s run as CEO was quickly disrupted by Musk’s arrival as a major shareholder and increasingly vocal antagonist of its current leadership. The two had not been on good terms and none of it was hidden from the public eye.
After Musk’s involvement, Parag Agrawal was unlikely to keep his job.
In one of Musk’s filings about the deal, he said that he “does not have confidence in management”.
Several text messages during the lawsuit showed that Musk and Agrawal had a contentious exchange early on during the deal process after Musk asked his followers whether Twitter was “dying”. On April 9, Agarwal had written to Musk: “You are free to tweet ‘is Twitter dying?’ but it’s my responsibility to tell you that it’s not helping me make Twitter better in the current context.” Musk fired back: “What did you get done this week?”
Elon Musk took over Twitter on Friday after a bitter legal battle with the social media platform – days after Musk had pulled the plug on the buyout deal in July – claiming that he was misled by Twitter concerning the number of bot accounts on its platform.
On October 17, Musk and Twitter were expected in a face-off in Delaware’s Court of Chancery – wherein the social media company was set to seek an order directing Musk to close the deal for $44 billion. However, earlier this month, Musk proposed to proceed with his original $44 billion bid – calling for an end to the lawsuit by Twitter.