Automattic’s interim CEO and legal chief signed reciprocal severance deals during Mullenweg’s brief ouster

Automattic’s finance chief and top lawyer approved severance arrangements for one another during the short period in which Matt Mullenweg was away from the company’s leadership, according to documents reviewed by TechCrunch. The agreements concern Mark Davies, the chief financial officer who served as interim chief executive, and Chief Legal Officer Andy Missan. Both documents took effect on September 10 and set out potentially valuable benefits should either executive leave under terms that trigger the provisions.

The approvals occurred in a roughly 33-hour interval between Mullenweg’s placement on leave and his return. During that span, Davies was running the company on an interim basis. Rather than being ordinary administrative records completed after an executive departure, the documents were signed while both executives remained central figures at Automattic and while the company’s leadership structure was temporarily unsettled.

Davies signed Missan’s agreement, while Missan authorized Davies’s. That reciprocal arrangement is the feature likely to draw the closest attention, given the unusual circumstances surrounding the company’s leadership change. The available information does not establish that either man has left Automattic, nor does it say that benefits have been paid. It does show that the executives established contractual terms for a future qualifying departure during Mullenweg’s absence.

Under the agreements, a qualifying exit would entitle each executive to a cash payment equal to 12 months of base pay. The salary component would be paid in a single amount rather than distributed through regular payroll over the year. The documents also provide for continued health coverage for another year, extending a major employment benefit beyond the end of service if the conditions for severance are met.

Equity is another significant part of the arrangements. The severance terms call for faster vesting of the executives’ equity awards, potentially allowing more of that compensation to become earned sooner than it otherwise would. They also preserve the ability to exercise stock options that have already vested. The value of those provisions would depend on the specific equity holdings, option terms and the company’s future value; the documents described the treatment, not a stated dollar total.

Taken together, the package combines cash, insurance and equity protections that could matter differently depending on how a separation occurs. The salary payment is fixed by reference to a year of base compensation, while the financial significance of accelerated vesting and exercisable options may change with the value of the underlying shares. Continued medical coverage adds a non-cash element. None of those terms automatically applies merely because the agreements were signed; the qualifying conditions remain essential.

Packages with salary, benefits and equity protections are often described as executive exit safeguards because they define what happens if a senior leader’s employment ends in particular circumstances. Their presence alone does not determine whether a departure will occur. In this case, the central issue is timing: the reciprocal approvals were completed as Davies was temporarily leading Automattic, after Mullenweg was put on leave but before he resumed his role.

The episode also separates two questions that may be easy to conflate. One is the company’s brief management transition, which lasted about a day and a half. The other is the legal and financial framework governing potential future departures by two executives involved in that transition. The agreements make the latter more concrete, but they do not, on their face, explain why Mullenweg was placed on leave or what prompted the temporary change in leadership.

For Automattic, investors, employees and other observers, the next developments will be whether either agreement is ever activated and whether the company provides further detail about the circumstances of the leadership interruption. Until then, the documents offer a narrow but consequential record of decisions taken during a compressed period of corporate uncertainty: two senior officers, one serving as interim CEO and the other overseeing legal affairs, signed exit protections for each other.

Source: TechCrunch