California: Elon Musk completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc late on Thursday and his first move was to fire the social media company’s top leadership which he accused of misleading him over the number of spam accounts on the platform.
Musk terminated Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, according to people familiar with the matter. Agrawal and Segal were in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters when the deal closed and were escorted out, the sources added.
Twitter, Musk and the executives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The social media platform’s shares will be suspended from trading on Friday, according to the New York Stock Exchange’s website.
Mr Musk said he bought the social media platform to help humanity and he wanted “civilization to have a common digital town square”.
Earlier this week Mr Musk tweeted a video of himself walking into Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco carrying a kitchen sink with the caption: “let that sink in!”
He also changed his Twitter profile to read “Chief Twit”.
Mr Musk fell out with Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal in early April – when he sat briefly on Twitter’s board.
In private messages revealed in court filings, Mr Musk talked about how Mr Agrawal didn’t understand how to fix Twitter’s problems.
His removal is hardly surprising and signals a clear change in direction for the social media platform.
Many people on the right of US politics will celebrate his exit. They view people like Parag Agrawal, and his predecessor, Jack Dorsey, as liberals who are curtailing free speech.
They also think under their stewardship Twitter has censored conservative voices.
Mr Musk’s early investments in Twitter initially escaped public attention. In January, he began making regular purchases of shares, so that by the middle of March he had accumulated a 5% stake in the firm.
In April, he was revealed as Twitter’s largest shareholder, and by the end of the month a deal was finally reached to buy the company for $44bn.
He said he planned to clean up spam accounts and preserve the platform as a venue for free speech.
But by mid-May Mr Musk, a prolific Twitter user, had begun to change his mind about the purchase, citing concerns that the number of fake accounts on the platform was higher than Twitter claimed.
In July he said he no longer wished to acquire the company. Twitter, however, argued the billionaire was legally committed to the acquisition.
Twitter eventually filed a lawsuit to hold him to the deal.
In early October, Mr Musk revived his takeover plans for the company on condition that legal proceedings were paused.
