As most of us already know, Microsoft has not too long ago paid a very cool $8.5 billion for the acquisition of Skype and its technologies. While the merger has not actually gone through yet, it looks like Skype is letting some of their executives go in order to avoid payouts. Among those dismissed are Vice Presidents David Gurle, Christopher Dean, Russ Shaw and Don Albert. Chief Marketing Officer Doug Bewsher and Anne Gillespie, head of human resources, were also fired along with executives Ramu Sunkara and Allyson Campa who were responsible for the 2011 Qik purchase.Their reasoning was that if those executives had stayed on until the merger, their stock options would have been worth more, which means the payout to those executives would have been higher as compared to letting them go before the merger, which would have meant that their stock options will be worth less, which would eat less into the $8.5 billion. Despite their stock options still being worth quite a bit it was still rather unceremonious to be let go and there was no word on whether they were given prior notice to this.
Do you think they were compensated in other ways, perhaps in secret? Or will we be seeing several lawsuits as backlash for what they did? I guess sometimes a smart business decision is not always a pleasant one.