Elon Musk takes control of Twitter, fires CEO Parag Agarwal: Reports
New Delhi, Oct 28 : Tesla CEO Elon Musk took control of Twitter and fired its top executives, news agency AFP reported. This came ahead of a Friday deadline to complete his purchase of the platform.
Twitter CEO Parag Agarwal, Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal, policy and trust; Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, are some of the top executives who have been fired, news agency Reuters reported.
He had accused them of misleading him and Twitter investors over the number of fake accounts on the social media platform.
On Thursday, Musk had said that he is buying Twitter to ‘try to help more humanity, whom I love’. Ned Sehgal and Parag Agrawal were in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters when the deal closed and was escorted out, sources told Reuters.
A day before the deal was complete, Elon Musk visited the Twitter headquarters and changed his bio to ‘Chief Twit’.
“Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Musk said in an open letter to advertisers on Thursday.
‘Chief Twit’ Elon Musk carries sink into Twitter HQ ahead of $44 billion buyout deadline
The $44 billion acquisition began on April 4 when Musk announced that he had a 9.2 percent stake in the company, making him the largest shareholder. He said that he planned to clean up spam accounts and his lawyers then accused Twitter of not complying with his requests for information on the subject.
However, by mid-May, Musk changed his mind about the purchase, citing concerns that the number of fake accounts on the micro-blogging site was higher than what Twitter claimed. He then announced that he no longer wished to go ahead with the $44 billion deal. Twitter argued that the billionaire was legally committed to buying the company and filed a lawsuit.
In early October, when Musk was set to be deposed by Twitter’s lawyers ahead of the start of their trial, Musk again made a U-turn and offered to complete the deal.
-The India Today
