Newly returned CEO and co-founder of Twitter Jack Dorsey revealed that he is giving back one-third of the Twitter stocks that he owns back to the social network's employees.
The move could be a much-needed morale booster for the company's workers, as one of Dorsey's first moves upon being brought back to lead Twitter was to lay off 8 percent of its workforce.
In a tweet, Dorsey said that the stocks he would be giving back, equivalent to about 1 percent of Twitter's shares, would be placed in an employee equity pool to reinvest directly in Twitter's employees.
"I'd rather have a smaller part of something big than a bigger part of something small," Dorsey added in a separate tweet. "I'm confident we can make Twitter big."
Twitter's stock upon the close of trading on Oct. 22 was at $29.16, which would value the company's market capitalization at $19.7 billion. As such, the worth of the shares that Dorsey is giving back to Twitter's employees would amount to around $197 million.
It is not immediately clear, however, how Dorsey's magnanimous move would be put to use. Representatives from Twitter declined to issue comments regarding the matter, stating that the donation would be detailed in a filing on Oct. 23 with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission.
This is not the first time that Dorsey has done such a generous thing, as in December of 2013, he gave back 10 percent of his shares to Square, the digital payments company that he also co-founded and also currently leads as its CEO. Last week, upon Square's filing of paperwork to go public, Dorsey also said that he would be donating 40 million of his shares in Square to charity.
Evan Williams, Dorsey's co-founder of Twitter, remains the largest stakeholder of the company with a 6.8 percent stake. Other large stakeholders include Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who owns over 5 percent, and Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, who recently revealed that he owned 4 percent of Twitter.
Twitter is currently facing the problems of sluggish growth in its user base and criticism from Wall Street, and so Dorsey is working on accelerating the social network's pace for innovation, as well as to provide motivation to its employees.
