MAccording to several US media reports, high-tech billionaire Elon Musk has completed the takeover of the short message service Twitter. A deadline for taking over the platform would have expired on Friday.
According to media reports, Musk’s era at Twitter begins with layoffs in the executive suite. On Thursday, the previous company boss Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal were fired, among others, the broadcaster CNBC and the Wall Street Journal reported. The top manager responsible for the fight against hate speech and false information Vijaya Gadde was among the dismissed, it said.
Musk had repeatedly criticized Agrawal and the Twitter leadership in recent months. At least one of the managers had been taken out of the company’s headquarters, wrote the “New York Times”, citing informed people. An official announcement about the completion of the approximately 44 billion dollar takeover was still pending.
According to the New York Times, it was also unclear whether the deal had already been completed at the time of the layoffs. According to the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal, the tech billionaire has owned Twitter since Thursday.
The transaction must be completed by 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time (11:00 p.m. CEST) on Friday, otherwise the deal will still end up in court. A judge gave Musk and Twitter this deadline to finally settle the takeover after months of back and forth.
Musk now “Chief Twit” according to his Twitter profile
Musk had engineered the takeover himself, but then tried to get out of the deal, citing allegedly false information about the number of fake accounts on Twitter. Twitter took him to court – and shortly before the trial in the state of Delaware, Musk agreed to buy Twitter at the originally agreed price of $54.20 per share. The fact that he made the cessation of the court case a condition caused uncertainty until the end.
It has been clear for days that Musk has come to terms with his new role as Twitter owner. He showed up at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday and described himself as “Chief Twit” on his Twitter profile. According to US media, he wants to introduce himself to the employees there on a larger scale on Friday. This should not be an easy performance for him after Musk had publicly criticized the company and its management for months and recent reports of large job cuts caused uncertainty among employees. He is said to have rejected information that he wanted to throw out three quarters of the employees at headquarters this week.
