Elon Musk takes over Twitter and fires top executives
Tesla boss Elon Musk is now taking over Twitter
Source: Patrick Pleul/dpa
According to US media, it is fixed: Elon Musk takes over Twitter. The Tesla boss and tech billionaire reached an agreement with the group shortly before a deadline – and apparently immediately fired the Twitter boss and two other top executives.
DAccording to media reports, Elon Musk’s era on Twitter began with layoffs in the executive suite. On Thursday, among other things, the previous boss Parag Agrawal and chief financial officer Ned Segal were fired, among other things, the broadcaster CNBC and the “Wall Street Journal” reported on Friday night. The top manager responsible for the fight against hate speech and false information Vijaya Gadde was among the dismissed, it said.
Musk had repeatedly criticized Agrawal and the Twitter leadership in recent months. At least one of the managers had been taken out of the company’s headquarters, wrote the “New York Times”, citing informed people. An official announcement about the completion of the approximately 44 billion dollar takeover was still pending.
Of the “New York Times” according to it, it was also unclear whether the deal had already been completed at the time of the layoffs. According to the Washington Post and “Wall Street Journal” the tech billionaire has been the owner of Twitter since Thursday.
According to reports, Musk initially wants to take over the post after buying Twitter. In the long run, however, he could hand over the top job to someone else, the financial service Bloomberg wrote on Friday.
The transaction must be completed by Friday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time (11 p.m. CEST) or the deal will end up in court. A judge gave Musk and Twitter this deadline to finally settle the takeover after months of back and forth. Late Thursday (local time) Musk wrote on Twitter: “The bird is freed”.
Musk had engineered the takeover himself, but then tried to get out of the deal, citing allegedly false information about the number of fake accounts on Twitter. Twitter took him to court – and shortly before the Delaware trial began, Musk agreed to buy Twitter at the originally agreed price of $54.20 per share. The fact that he made the cessation of the court case a condition caused uncertainty until the end.
It has been clear for days that Musk has come to terms with his new role as Twitter owner. He showed up at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday and described himself as “Chief Twit” on his Twitter profile. According to US media, he wants to introduce himself to the employees there on a larger scale on Friday. This should not be an easy performance for him after Musk had publicly criticized the company and its management for months and recent reports of large job cuts caused uncertainty among employees. He is said to have rejected information that he wanted to throw out three quarters of the employees at headquarters this week.
According to Bloomberg, Musk also wants to implement his announcement that Twitter users will be banned for life. The ex-US President Donald Trump, among others, is affected by such a ban – which according to previous information is irreversible. It is still unclear whether the abolition of the lifetime ban would also change Trump’s position, according to Bloomberg. In a Twitter video, Trump praised his supporters who stormed the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. He was then banned from the platform.