SiliconBeat

Hansen Medical sweetened its severance agreements with several top executives last week as part of its efforts to retain them. That’s right, in order to keep them around, Hansen increased how much cash it would pay “in the  event of a covered termination of employment”, lengthened the period after their termination during which it would pay for their COBRA medical benefits and significantly increased the accelerated vesting of their equity.

Under its previous agreement with its top brass, Hansen Medical agreed to pay its executives three months of salary, three months health, dental, vision, and life/disability insurance benefits, and to accelerate the vesting of half of their unvested stock options should the company be acquired, or if the executive were terminated “for other than cause”, or if the executive quit because of “the material  change of his employment by substantial diminution in compensation or duties,” or after a “substantial relocation of his place of work”.

Under the modification of these plans enacted by the company on Oct. 28, the cash component of severance would be quadrupled to the equivalent of a full year’s salary, health benefits would likewise be extended for a full 12 months from three, and acceleration of vesting on equity compensation would be doubled to, well, everything, or 100 percent of equity compensation, which in addition to stock options, now includes restricted stock awards “and other equity awards” as well.

We last wrote about Hansen, a maker of robotic surgical tools, in May when the company felt it necessary to correct a statement its chief executive, Frederic Moll, made to the New York Times saying that his company “should become profitable by the end of next year.” The company  went on the SEC record by pointing out that it “has not provided, nor does it have any plans to provide, any currently applicable guidance concerning whether or when it will become profitable.”

Hansen’s stock, which was first offered to the public two years ago at $12 a share, and offered again last April at $13.34, is currently trading at $10.42, up from an all time low it touched on Oct. 10 of $6.10. Five days before the new severance agreements were reached, the company surprised Wall Street by reporting $10.9 million in sales, about 22 percent higher than analysts were expecting, and an adjusted loss of 48 cents, about 10 percent than analysts had feared.

Nevertheless, the company evidently needed to do something to keep its executives from bolting. The question more and more these days might be, exactly where will executives bolt to?