Twitter's new CEO Jack Dorsey has just announced that he is giving about a third of his shares - which equates to roughly 1% of the entire company - to employees.
The 38 year-old Dorsey made the announcement via his personal Twitter account (naturally).
'I'm giving 1/3 of my Twitter stock (exactly 1% of the company) to our employee equity pool to reinvest directly in our people.' he said.
According to FactSet, Dorsey's 21.86 million shares are worth about $640 million. The 1% figure he quoted is approximately 6.74 million shares, which is worth aroung $200 million as of Thursday's closing price.
Dorsey quickly tweeted a follow up, saying:
As for me: 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!
Analysts view Dorsey's move as a way to boost company morale following a round of lay-offs that saw the social media giant shed 300 employees.
Dorsey's ability to make decisions such as these was one of the reasons he got the position, according to re/code.
He told the company following the decision:
The roadmap is also a plan to change how we work, and what we need to do that work. Product and Engineering are going to make the most significant structural changes to reflect our plan ahead. We feel strongly that Engineering will move much faster with a smaller and nimbler team, while remaining the biggest percentage of our workforce. And the rest of the organization will be streamlined in parallel.
Dorsey's move isn't exactly going to hurt his bottom line to much. He is still CEO and owns about 24% of Square, the electronic payments company he started after his first departure form Twitter. His stake in that company, is valued at around $1.6 billion. It recently filed documents for a public offering.
