Elon Musk now owns Twitter, starts firing top executives [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Elon Musk became Twitter’s official owner on Thursday after fighting with the company for months.
• Musk started firing top executives including Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde.
• He changed his description in his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit” after tweeting “The bird is freed,”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is now officially the owner of Twitter after spending months trying to back out of the agreement.

Musk and Twitter formally closed on his offer on Thursday night to take the company private by paying $54.20 per share — about $44 billion.

On the same night, Musk started firing the company’s top executives including Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal, Chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sean Edgett, sources said.

Musk has been conducting meetings with workers and holding impromptu discussions at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters this week. An all-hands meeting with employees is expected to take place on Friday.

Musk changed his description in his Twitter profile to “Chief Twit” yesterday then tweeted “the bird is freed.”

The richest man in the world previously;y said that the title of CEO is not important to him. “I don’t really care what title is, but obviously, people do need to listen to me,” he told employees in June. Musk is also Tesla’s CEO, but his official title is “Technoking.” In addition, he is a co-founder of SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company. 

Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk is expected to be dismissed.

The judge, who oversees Twitter’s lawsuit against Musk, gave the two parties until Friday, October 28 to reach a deal outside of court or face a five-day trial in November. Musk and Twitter were said to be close to agreeing on a $50 per share deal, but the billionaire ultimately went back to his original offer of $54.20.

In April, Musk agreed to buy Twitter but when May came, he was privately expressing reservations about the agreement he’d signed and soon announced it was “on hold.” Musk claimed about “bots” or inauthentic accounts on the platform.

Musk initially said that he wanted to control Twitter, in part, to “defeat the spam bots” and then claimed the problem was worse than Twitter had let on. The allegation made him walk away from the company. In July, he wrote to Twitter offering to terminate the acquisition. In response, Twitter sued him in what proved to be a contentious and expensive court battle.

Musk said he wants to turn Twitter into a “super app,” but has not laid out any plans to do so. He has not announced any name of who will help him lead the company.

Source: Reuters