Sure, lots of people saying it's totally legal and "capitalism gonna capital", which is fair. Except imagine the absolute kicking morale will take as a result

Sure, lots of people saying it's totally legal and "capitalism gonna capital", which is fair. Except imagine the absolute kicking morale will take as a result of this. I'm sure it was bad enough, internally, when 17% of staff were made redundant. (I'm sure their internal channels are pretty salty and uncomfortable right now.) I'm sure there was plenty of anger internally at the C-levels. PR school would tell them to keep quiet and wait for the storm to pass; _not_ look to be publicly, personally, profiting from it to the tune of many millions of dollars. Poor morale leads to greater attrition of those your company needs to hold on to, especially at an inflection point such as this. It leads to it being harder to hire in the future (and more expensive.) It's up to the CFO to decide if that's worth it. It may be in the short-term; but long-term it's a much tricker equation.