Advertisment

Security costs to protect Twitter's CEO

author-image
CIOL Writers
New Update
CIOL Security costs to protect Twitter's CEO

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey did not make a penny in salaries, bonuses, or stock awards from the company last year. He did, however, receive more than $68,500 in security services, according to a Twitter filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Advertisment

In a footnote embedded deep inside a recent Twitter filing, Twitter revealed that it paid a whopping $68,506 for Dorsey’s “residential security and protective detail” in 2015. In addition, the company paid more than $43,000 for the same security services for previous CEO Dick Costolo.

Under the age of 40, tattooed entrepreneur Jack Dorsey runs two tech heavyweights: Twitter and Square. Dorsey co-founded Twitter in 2006 with Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass and was the company's chief executive until 2008. He subsequently moved on to co-found Square, a mobile-payments company but was brought back to lead Twitter last year after a tumultuous few years.

Twitter’s growth has stagnated and shareholders were growing concerned that it was being passed by as new services, like Instagram, Snapchat, and others, started attracting user attention. Dorsey replaced Costolo last year.

Advertisment

Since 2012, the company has lost money each year, despite growing revenue. In 2015, for instance, Twitter generated $2.2 billion in revenue, but lost $521 million.Shareholders haven’t lost sight of Twitter’s problems. In the last year, shares are down more than 65% to $17.48.

It’s unclear what Dorsey is getting for the more than $68,500 in security he’s provided, but it’s not unorthodox that a billionaire—or a chief executive in general—might get a security detail from a company.

Last year, Equilar, which tracks executive compensation, released an analysis of Fortune 100 data to determine how much companies have been paying over the years to protect their CEOs. Equilar found that in 2013, Amazon paid $1.6 million for security of its chief executive Jeff Bezos. Like Twitter, Amazon didn’t detail exactly why it paid so much for security, but did say that it believed the cost was “reasonable and necessary” for the e-commerce giant’s “benefit.”

snapchat hot-topics amazon jack-dorsey news twitter