Musk settles former Twitter executives’ suit over severance
Elon Musk has agreed to settle a $128m (£100m) lawsuit brought by four former top executives at Twitter, now X, over unpaid severance packages when he took over the company.
The executives, including former CEO Parag Agrawal, argued that Musk fired them “without reason” after buying Twitter in 2022 and denied them severance packages.
“The parties have reached a settlement and the settlement requires certain conditions to be satisfied in the near term,” the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote in a court filing last week. They did not disclose the terms of the settlement.
The suit, filed last year, is one of several legal challenges over unpaid severance packages for workers laid off after Musk’s arrival.
Lawyers for the former Twitter executives, as well as Musk and X, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the settlement.
The former top brass — Mr. Agrawal, former CFO Ned Segal, former general counsel Vijaya Gadde and former general counsel Sean Edgett — claimed in their lawsuit that they were owed a year’s worth of salary and stock, part of a years-old severance plan.
They also said Musk’s decision was part of a trend of refusing to pay former employees what they were owed.
In August, Musk and
Musk bought Twitter in 2022 for $44 billion, after initially trying to back out of his offer. Once the acquisition was finalized, he immediately decided to fire the company’s top executives, including all four executives. Musk cut Twitter’s workforce by more than half.
In their lawsuit, the former top executives claim that Musk was frustrated at being forced to complete the purchase and that the multibillionaire falsely accused them of misconduct to force them out.
