At the board's request, Mr. Kozlowski resigned as chief of Tyco International, a conglomerate, forfeiting his contractual right to a severance payment that would have exceeded $120 million.
This orgy of Jacobean backstage backstabbing wasn't televised directly, but rumors about its intrigues captured our imaginations anyhow, stirring extensive discussions of ratings numbers, severance payments, contractual etiquette and viewer demographics.
Other disagreements occurred over severance packages and contractual matters.
The NAO noted "decisions to award severance payments that exceed contractual entitlements have, until recently, been subject to insufficient challenge and oversight.
He has argued that the severance payments were in line with contractual obligations and the needs of the BBC at the time.
Should he have known that severance payments were being made on non-contractual terms?
The scale of the BBC's severance payments – some in excess of the corporation's contractual obligations – led MPs to accuse it of a "dereliction of duty".
3.01pm BST A quarter of the 60 severance payments examined by the NAO were in excess of contractual obligations and signed off by the senior independent director Marcus Agius, says Hodge.
In a report, the National Audit Office said: "YPLA were aware of 14 instances at nine academies where severance payments had been made by academies in excess of employers' contractual commitments, and submitted these cases, with an aggregate value of £227,832 to HM Treasury in June 2012 relating to the 2011-12 financial year.
The issue in hand being the remuneration and in particular severance payments made to top managers at the corporation, which exceeded not only contractual obligations but also, it would seem, public and political tolerance.
