Twitter (TWTR) Names Hugh Johnston, Martha Lane Fox to its Board

Twitter IPO
Image credit: Anthony Quintano

Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWRT) announced the appointment of Hugh Johnston and Martha Lane Fox to its Board of Directors effective immediately.

Mr. Johnston is the vice chairman and chief financial officer of PepsiCo, Inc. (NYSE:PEP). He also served on the Board of AOL Inc. (NYSE:AOL) from October 2012 to June 2015.

Twitter said Mr. Johnston has been appointed to its Audit Committee. He will serve as Chairman of the Committee after the company’s 2016 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.

Ms. Lane Fox was the co-founder and managing director of lastminute.com, a travel and leisure website. She was also the founder and Chairperson of doteveryone.org.uk, an organization advancing the understanding and use if internet enabled technologies since September 2015. She is the Chancellor of Open University and a member of the House of Lords.

In a regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Twitter said Mr. Johnston and Ms. Lane Fox are entitled to cash and equity compensation for their service on the Board and its committees as stipulated in the company’s Outside Director Compensation Policy.

Mr. Johnston and Ms. Lane Fox each executed Twitter’s standard form of indemnification agreement.

Twitter will make further Board appointments

Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted that the company will appoint other members of the Board that “will bring diversity and represent strong communities on Twitter.” He added, “This matters & is a must.”

The microblogging company also announced that Peter Currie and Peter Chernin were not considered by the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee and the Board for re-election. Their terms on the Board are set to expire at the 2016 Annual Meeting of stockholders.

Furthermore, Twitter disclosed that its CFO Anthony Noto received 22,500 Performance Based Restricted Stock Units (PRSUs) at target levels and 318,750 Restricted Stock Unites (RSUs) as compensation for taking on additional responsibilities.

Stock performance

The stock price of Twitter was down 2.30% to $16.59 per share at the time of this writing, around 1:37 in the afternoon in New York. The company lost more than 27% in stock value year-to-date.

The microblogging company recently struck a deal to stream the Thursday night games of the National Football League (NFL). Some market observers suggested that the deal could push Twitter’s stock up. They noted that Twitter is popular among football fans and the NFL games could boost traffic to its platform and attract more advertisers.