Elon musk has finally completed his $ 44 billion Twitter deal after a legal battle with Twitter. Soon after the acquisition, he sacked Parag Agrawal as CEO of the micro-blogging site. He also intends to reverse the permanent ban on users, Bloomberg reported.
Agrawal was fired along with other major executives upon completion of the takeover, Bloomberg on Friday reported citing a person familiar with the matter. The Tesla and Space X owner is expected to remain CEO of Twitter in the interim period but may eventually cede the role in the longer term, the report said.
According to multiple reports in US media, Twitter’s Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde its legal and policy executive as well as Ned Segal, its chief financial officer Ned Segal was asked to go.
Musk ahead of his USD 44 billion Twitter acquisition deal had dismissed speculation about why he’d buy the micro-blogging platform and his thoughts on advertising.
“The reason I acquired Twitter is that it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right-wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society,” he said in a statement on Thursday.
The Tesla founder said that Twitter should be “warm and welcoming to all” and enable users to choose the experience they want to have. Further, Musk told advertisers that he wants the platform to be “the most respected advertising platform in the world.”
Meanwhile, on Wednesday Musk walked into the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco, carrying the bowl of a sink. This action was the object of several memes on the internet.
Musk tweeted a video of himself carrying a kitchen sink and captioned it “let that sink in!”
He also changed his Twitter profile to read “Chief Twit”.
In July, in a surprising turn of events, Elon Musk who had long been showing his interest to buy Twitter terminated the deal. The Tesla CEO did so by alleging that Twitter violated their mutual purchase agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its platform.
After Musk put out the deal termination announcement, the market saw a sharp decline. Later, Twitter sued Musk accusing him of using bots as a pretext to exit a deal.
Elon Musk on October 5 offered to close his buyout of Twitter at the original agreed price. Twitter confirmed saying that it received a letter from Elon Musk to go ahead with their original deal of $54.20 per share (or $44 billion). Twitter shares went up 22 per cent after the news.
In a new filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk’s legal team also asked the court to adjourn the trial and all other proceedings.
However, the Twitter deal legal proceedings had been put on hold by a judge overseeing the dispute until October 28.
(with inputs from Agencies)