Is Elon Musk in charge of Twitter? | The Sun

ELON Musk announced he is the sole executive for Twitter after buying Twitter for $44billlion.

The news comes after Musk fired all top employees at the company and announced he will be stepping into the role of CEO.

Is Elon Musk in charge of Twitter?

Elon Musk made good on his offer to buy Twitter on October 27, 2022, adding it to his other companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink.

He bought Twitter for $44billion – $2.5billion less than the original deal due to decreased Twitter stocks.

Twitter's former CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, trust, and safety, were all immediately fired, according to sources of the Washington Post.

As of October 31, 2022, Musk dissolved the entire Twitter board and made himself the "sole director," according to reports. The news followed his bio change to "Chief twit" after he acquired the company.

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In a new move, Musk has also pulled 50 of his employees from the tech department at Tesla to his team at Twitter as well as the head of his family office Jared Birchall, angel investor Jason Calacanis, and founding PayPal COO and venture capitalist David Sacks.

As Musk moves to implement new strategies within the company, Twitter employees told CNBC they have not been told what headcount cuts will be made within their groups or what budgets and long-term strategies will be created.

However, The Washington Post reported Musk plans to lay off 25 percent of the workforce initially, amounting to about 7k people, which will be led by his long-term lawyer Alex Spiro.

In addition to laying off Twitter's top executives, Musk has also dismissed the company's board of directors.

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Musk commented on his takeover of the CEO position in a post on Twitter, writing the move is "just temporary."

Did Elon Musk almost terminate his Twitter deal?

On April 25, 2022, news broke that Elon Musk was working to finalize a deal to buy Twitter for $46.5billion.

Months later, Musk officially terminated his Twitter deal, Reuters reported.

According to the outlet, Musk cited a "material breach of multiple provisions of the agreement."

Since the news, Twitter fell six percent in extended trading and is now suing Musk to hold him to the $44billion deal.

Twitter filed a lawsuit against Musk on July 12 for violating the buyout deal.

The lawsuit says: "Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he – unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law – is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away."

Twitter's chairman, Bret Taylor had warned that the company would pursue legal action prior to filing the lawsuit in a tweet on July 8.

He wrote: "The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.

"We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery."

According to ZDNet, Musk previously stated that one of his motivations for buying Twitter was to combat trolls on the social media platform when he said: "A top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and spam bots and bot armies that are on Twitter."

He also stated that he wanted to make changes to the Twitter Blue premium subscription service by reducing prices and possibly banning advertising.

Part of his offer letter to purchase Twitter also stated: "The company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form."

As a result, he was seeking to make some changes to Twitter.

On June 21, 2022, it was announced that Twitter's board recommended unanimously that shareholders approved the proposed $44billion sale.

Who owns Twitter?

Musk bought the social media platform on October 27, and less than a week later, he released a statement on Twitter conveying his motivation to acquire the company.

"There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and what I think about advertising. Most of it has been wrong," he wrote.

"The reason I acquired Twitter is because 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 continues to criticize "traditional media" and claims the "relentless pursuit of clicks" continues to negatively polarize Twitter users.

He said: "That is why I bought Twitter. I didn't do it because it would be easy.

"I didn't do it to make more money. I did it to try to help humanity, whom I love.

"And I do so with humility, recognizing that failure in pursuing this goal, despite our best efforts, is a very real possibility."

Before Musk bought Twitter, it was not owned by a single person, but by shareholders.

According to Investopedia, there were five top shareholders in addition to the numerous shareholders around the world.

The Vanguard Group, Inc held the largest stake, owning about 82.4million Twitter shares, which represents 10.3 percent of shares.

Elon Musk had the second-largest stake, owning 73.5million Twitter shares, representing a 9.2 percent stake in the company as of year-end 2021.

Morgan Stanley held the third-largest stake in Twitter with about 67million shares, which represents 8.4 percent of the total outstanding as of year-end 2021.

BlackRock Inc. owned about 52.1million shares of Twitter, representing a 6.5 percent stake as of year-end 2021.

The fifth-largest shareholder was State Street Corp., which held 36.4 million Twitter shares, representing a 4.5 percent stake in the company as of the end of 2021.

Now, however, Elon Musk will own the company outright.

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