He's not the only CEO who's tried to appease employees hit hard by falling stock prices.
With his company’s stock price in the doldrums, LinkedIn
CEO Jeff Weiner is trying to boost employee morale — and keep talent
from jumping ship — by giving them his annual $14 million stock bonus,Re/code reported.
“Jeff decided
to ask the Compensation Committee to forgo his annual equity grant, and
to instead put those shares back in the pool for LinkedIn employees,”
Joe Roualdes, a spokesperson for LinkedIn, told MONEY.
Weiner’s
decision follows LinkedIn’s dismal earnings report last month, which
caused the company’s market value to plummet by about 43% in just one
day. Still, the chief executive maintained in a meeting later that daythat “we are the same company we were the day before our earnings announcement.”
Be that as it
may, LinkedIn is definitely feeling the heat from skittish investors
with decreasing tolerance for weakness from high-valued tech companies.
As Facebook’s star continues to rise, Weiner likely worried about losing employees to better-performing competitors in Silicon Valley.
Weiner is
hardly the only chief executive of a struggling tech company to delve
into his own earnings to try to appease anxious employees. After
Twitter’s stock plummeted in October, CEO Jack Dorsey announced that he
would give a third of his stock award—worth about $200 million—to
employees. Plum Creek Timber Co. CEO Rick Holley also gave back his $2 million bonus in
2014, because he did not feel he should receive it unless shareholders
saw a return on their investment, Business Insider reported.
Though Weiner’s
gift is an impressive gesture, he isn’t feeling the same financial
pinch as other LinkedIn employees. He owns about $12.7 million in
company stock, with another $57.5 million in vested options that he can
buy for about 2% of LinkedIn’s current stock price.
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