After months of twists and turns, Elon Musk has finally closed a $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter Inc. As per several media reports, the business tycoon fired the social media giant’s top executives including CEO Parag Agrawal, legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and General Counsel Sean Edgett, among other top executives.
Reportedly, the top leadership team, who was fired, were escorted out of the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco by security on Thursday.
“Agrawal and Segal were in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters when the deal closed and were escorted out,” reported Reuters quoting sources.
“At least one of the executives who was fired was escorted out of Twitter’s office,” wrote New York Times.
On Wednesday, he changed his Twitter Profile To “Chief Twit” after he shared a video on Twitter with the caption “Let that sink in”. In the video, he could be seen entering Twitter headquarters with a kitchen sink.
“The bird is freed,” tweeted Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
Musk Agrawal Clash: Musk Accuses Top Management Of Misleading Him
The deal was closed on October 27, just a day before court ordered deadline. The takeover deal hit headlines in April this year but stretched till October with a lot of accusations. Musk accused Twitter’s top executives of misleading him and investors over the number of fake accounts on the social media platform.
The world’s richest man, Elon Musk started investing and purchasing Twitter shares in January. By mid-March, he had accumulated a 5% stake in the firm. In April, he was announced as the largest shareholder of the microblogging website with a 9 % stake.
The business tycoon was offered a position On Twitter’s board which was communicated by CEO Parag Agrawal through a tweet. After which Musk tweeted, “Is Twitter dying?” Parag considered the criticism unhelpful.
After which Musk tweeted, “This is a waste of time. Will make an offer to take Twitter private.”
He gave statements where he said that he is planning to clean up the spam accounts and preserve the platform as a venue for free speech. But mid-April, he changed his mind citing that the platform has more fake accounts in comparison to the numbers claimed by Twitter.
In August, Musk put the deal temporarily on hold while citing the allegations by Twitter’s former head of security. The whistleblower has alleged that the company misled regulators about its poor cybersecurity defences and negligence in attempting to root out fake accounts that spread misinformation.
CEO Agarwal contended that the billionaire was legally committed to the acquisition and eventually filed a lawsuit to hold him to the deal.
As per the reports, he had planned to lay off 75% of the employees. However, Musk told Twitter that the 75% figure was inaccurate.
