LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, passes on annual stock compensation to employees
03 Mar 2016
Professional networking site LinkedIn yesterday said chief executive Jeff Weiner is declining his 2016 annual stock compensation, and is instead passing it on to his employees at the professional social network.
The move comes in the wake of LinkedIn's disappointing first-quarter revenue and profit forecast that undershot Wall Street estimates last month, as growth slowed in the company's ads business and its hiring services came under pressure outside North America.
Up to yesterday's close of $119.6, LinkedIn's stock had plummeted 38 per cent since its results on 4 February.
"Jeff decided to ask the Compensation Committee to forego his annual equity grant, and to instead put those shares back in the pool for LinkedIn employees," a LinkedIn spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters.
There was no confirmation of the value of the package, but according to technology website Recode, which cited a source familiar with the matter, it was worth about $14 million.
For the year ended 31 December, 2014, Weiner had received stock awards worth $10.2 million and option awards worth $3.2 million.
According to commentators, the move would go a long way to boost the morale of employees after the company's stock value crashed.
Kurt Wagner of Re/code first spotted the move after the company failed to file a compensation form to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for Weiner. According to a company representative, the LinkedIn CEO had put the stock back into the employee equity pool.
Weiner had been trying to rally his employees into believing in that the professional social network would regain lost value.
Earlier in October 2015, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey gave away one-third of his ownership stake, or 1 per cent of the company, back to employees in October after a round of layoffs (See: Twitter chief Dorsey to give a third of his stock to workers ).
