Windfalls for Twitter staff as social media giant's shares float hits $18bn
Dozens of Twitter’s London staff were today in line for huge share windfalls as the social media giant priced its stock market float at $18 billion — nearly one third higher than its previous expectations.
Bruce Daisley, the UK general manager, was poised to get a big shares windfall and other senior London-based executives were in line for similar deals.
Other leading Twitter UK executives include head of agency sales Dara Nasr, head of planning Oliver Snoddy and director of media Lewis Wiltshire.
Twitter has hiked its proposed share price twice in recent days from $20 to $25 and then to $26 last night in the biggest frenzy for a stock market float seen on Wall Street since Facebook’s $10 b illion debut 18 months ago.
The shares were beginning trading in New York today and City spread-betting firm IG was forecasting the stock could soar as high as $43 a share.
David Jones, analyst at IG, said: “The price has stabilised around this area in the last 10 days or so. There is slightly less hype than there was with Facebook but there is still a lot of enthusiasm.”
Twitter has been anxious to avoid the same fate as Facebook by pricing its shares conservatively, but strong investor demand in recent days has prompted its bankers, led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, to increase the price.
The site’s co-founders, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams, are among the biggest winners as their stakes will be worth roughly $600 m illion and $1.5 billion respectively.
Twitter, which employs 2,300 people worldwide, has not said how many staff it employs in London. But the company’s stock market prospectus says it has set aside almost $900 million for “ stock-based compensation” in the next quarter and the coming years.
Britain, where Twitter has 15 million users, is the social media company’s biggest market after America, generating £27 million of sales in the first nine months of this year — 10 per cent of group sales.
Twitter only opened an office in London in 2011 but has been on a hiring spree. Mr Daisley worked at Google’s YouTube for three years for before joining Twitter in January last year.
Facebook handed huge awards to its UK employees last year at the time of its float, with its 119 staff receiving 4.1 million shares worth nearly £87.5 million — or about £735,000 per person.
