Three top executives of Twitter Inc sacked by the new owner and world’s richest man, Elon Musk, stand to receive separation payouts totalling $122 million.

Musk fired Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, immediately he took over the control of the firm on Thursday.

He had accused the trio of misleading him and Twitter investors over the number of fake accounts on the platform.

Research firm, Equilar, valued Agrawal’s so-called “golden parachute” at $57.4 million, while Segal’s was $44.5 million and Gadde’s was $20 million, according to Reuters.

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Agrawal, previously Twitter’s chief technology officer, was named CEO in November 2021. His total compensation for 2021 was $30.4 million, according to a Twitter securities filing, largely in stock awards.

Major payouts to executives tied to changes in control of a company are common to smooth ownership transitions but can be controversial.

Twitter’s filing states that “In the case of a Change of Control event, we believe that these arrangements assist to maximize stockholder value and maintain executive focus in the immediate period prior to, during and after the Change of Control event.”

Payouts would include 100% of an executive’s annual base salary, healthcare premiums, and accelerated vesting of equity awards, the filing states.

Equilar director of research Courtney Yu, according to Reuters, said the fired Twitter executives “should be getting these payments unless Elon Musk had cause for termination, with cause in these cases usually being that they broke the law or violated company policy.”

The Star