Twitter is now an Elon Musk company / Twitter’s current CEO, CFO, and policy chief have left the building
By ELIZABETH LOPATTO / @mslopatto
https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/27/231 ... -agreement
Oct 28, 2022
Laura Normand / The Verge
Elon Musk, Twitter’s most important shitposter, has added the company to his business empire after months of legal skirmishes, according to CNBC, https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/27/elon-mu ... s-say.html The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... elon-musk/ and Insider. https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-mu ... al-2022-10
The acquisition was confirmed in an SEC filing https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data ... -index.htm from the company on Friday morning, noting it’s delisting $TWTR https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/28/234 ... g-our-twtr from the New York Stock Exchange. He celebrated by firing executives.
Musk fired Parag Agrawal, who succeeded Jack Dorsey as Twitter CEO, and chief financial officer Ned Segal, both of who were in the building at the time and escorted out by security, according to Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/markets/deals/e ... 022-10-28/
Vijaya Gadde, the company’s policy chief whom Musk had publicly criticized, https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/27/2304 ... harassment was also ousted. Sean Edgett, the general counsel, is gone, too, The New York Times reports. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/27/tech ... itter.html (Bloomberg says security escorted him out, as well. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... -of-enmity) Chief customer officer Sarah Personette was also fired, Insider reports. https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter ... er-2022-10
The execs received handsome payouts for their trouble, Insider reports: https://www.businessinsider.com/twitter ... er-2022-10 Agrawal got $38.7 million, Segal got $25.4 million, Gadde got $12.5 million, and Personette, who tweeted yesterday about how excited she was for Musk’s takeover, got $11.2 million.
Musk originally offered to buy Twitter https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/14/2302 ... uy-twitter in April, then changed his mind and tried to back out in May. https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/8/23200 ... f-contract
Then, he changed his mind again on October 4th, filing a letter with the Securities and Exchange Commission affirming his commitment to the original deal. https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/4/2338 ... -buy-again
Musk has been meeting with Twitter employees this week and is expected to address them on Friday https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/27/234 ... r-to-close now that his $44 billion takeover is done.
Musk was scheduled to be deposed on October 6th and 7th https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... iling-says after having moved his deposition from late September. He announced he’d honor the contract his lawyers negotiated after all, just days before the deposition was to take place. That deposition was probably going to be uncomfortable; a judge found that Musk likely deleted Signal messages https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/5/2338 ... dge-ruling that were relevant to the case. The deposition was delayed as Musk and Twitter worked toward a deal; Musk even received a court order halting proceedings to allow the deal to close by October 28th.
Questions still remain https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/27/234 ... r-to-close about what Musk plans to do with Twitter now that he owns it, though he’s made a number of public comments. https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/5/2338 ... ter-future
The Washington Post reported that Musk planned to cull 75 percent of Twitter’s employees, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business ... -workforce citing estimates given to prospective Twitter investors. Musk told Twitter staffers that the 75 percent figure was inaccurate, Bloomberg reported. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... 75-of-jobs
In Musk’s text messages, provided during discovery to Twitter’s lawyers, he and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, a friend of his, discussed cutting staff by requiring a return to office.
“Day zero,” Calacanis texted Musk. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... ter-v-musk
Requiring Twitter employees to return to offices would mean 20 percent of the staff would leave voluntarily, Calacanis wrote. Also, Calacanis told Musk,Sharpen your blades boys.
Twitter faces challenges to its free speech stance in court, as the Supreme Court agreed to take up two cases that will determine its liability for illegal content. https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/5/2338 ... ection-230Twitter CEO is my dream job.
Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, has suggested he’ll change the way Twitter’s moderation works, potentially relaxing the kinds of policies that saw former President Donald Trump permanently banned https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/10/2306 ... r-ban-lift from the platform.
Although Musk has said that his Twitter acquisition is
https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/14/2302 ... ock-buyoutnot a way to make money,
he’s reportedly raised ideas for cost cutting and increasing revenue.
Governments and corporations could be charged a “slight cost” https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/4/23056 ... rporations to use Twitter, and there could be job cuts on the table https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/28/2304 ... r-job-cuts to improve the company’s bottom line. Some of Twitter’s current employees have criticized Musk’s plans for the platform as “incoherent” https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/17/2317 ... -reactions and lacking in detail.
More broadly, Musk has talked about using Twitter to create
This is a reference to China’s WeChat app, which started life as a messaging platform but has since grown to encompass multiple businesses, from shopping to payments and gaming.X, the everything app.
Musk told Twitter employees in June. https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/16/2317 ... hat-tiktokYou basically live on WeChat in China,
Musk is expected to share more about his plan for Twitter with employees on Friday. Late Thursday evening, hours after the news of him firing execs first broke, he tweeted the following:If we can recreate that with Twitter, we’ll be a great success.
