Cognizant CEO Brian Humphries terminated involuntarily: Report

The former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Cognizant, Brian Humphries, was involuntarily terminated without cause, Moneycontrol reported, citing the company's stock exchange filings.

Humphries was sacked as CEO by the board on January 9. On January 12, Stephen Rohleder took over as the chairman of the company while former Infosys executive S. Ravi Kumar was named the CEO.

As per the report, the company in its proxy filing said that Humphries’ separation was considered an involuntary termination without cause.

"Humphries had been fired after the sudden surprise appointment of Ravi Kumar S as CEO, as well as Humphries’ own post on LinkedIn that it 'was announced' that he would be stepping down as CEO," Moneycontrol report said.

As the term suggests, involuntarily terminated without cause means the dismissal of any employee due to the actions or decisions of the employer and not the employee. In this case, the employee is entitled to severance payment.

As Mint reported earlier, Cognizant paid about $3.8 million in severance payments to Humphries, which is well within the board’s newly instilled policy of capping severance payment to 2.99 times the sum of base pay and bonus.

Humphries’ severance payout included two components - Swiss franc 1.15 million in 12 months’ pay and Swiss franc 2.3 million as a separation bonus, according to the company’s regulatory filings. This translates to about $3.8 million.

Cognizant, which follows a January-December financial year, disclosed that it had paid a bonus of about British pounds 1.85 million ($2.25 million) for 2022 and a base salary of $1.24 million to Humphries. This implies that Humphries’ base salary and bonus totalled $3.49 million last year.