Elon Musk, Twitter's new 'Chief Twit', has become the sole director of the microblogging site after he fired the entire board of directors, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing by Twitter. This comes hours after Musk denied a report claiming mass layoffs at the company before November 1.
The billionaire is on a firing spree if US media reports are to be believed and fired top executives of the world's biggest micro-blogging site on day zero of acquiring Twitter. The top executives of the company included the former CEO Parag Agrawal, the CFO Ned Segal, and the legal and policy head, Vijaya Gadde.
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According to a report by Business Today, Musk, in a separate SEC, announced, "The following persons, who were directors of Twitter prior to the effective time of the merger, are no longer directors of Twitter: Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou." This move has made Musk both the Director and CEO of Twitter.
However, Musk also stated that his position as the sole Director or CEO is only temporary, without specifying any reason for that.
A report by Washington Post claims that Musk is planning to fire 25 per cent of Twitter's workforce. Previously, the Tesla chief had expressed his displeasure at the management system of the micro-blogging site.
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The move comes three days after he completed his $44 billion takeover of Twitter. As his first order of business Musk fired the top brass of Twitter including its Indian-origin CEO Parag Agrawal and legal head Vijaya Gadde.
In the past, he had accused the CEO of misleading him and Twitter investors over the number of fake accounts on the social media platform.
Agrawal was appointed Twitter CEO in November last year after the social media site’s co-founder Jack Dorsey had stepped down.
An IIT Bombay and Stanford alumnus, Agrawal joined Twitter over a decade ago when there were fewer than 1,000 employees at the company.
“Agrawal, who was appointed Twitter’s chief executive last year, had clashed” with Musk “publicly and privately in recent months about the takeover,” a New York Times report said.
Musk had also “singled out” Gadde, “criticising her for her role in content moderation decisions at the company”, it added.
As the Twitter account of former US President Donald Trump was permanently suspended in January last year, Hyderabad-born Gadde was at the forefront of this dramatic decision undertaken within days of the attempted insurrection by pro-Trump supporters at the US Capitol.
Musk had arrived at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday and had been meeting with engineers and advertising executives.
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The 51-year-old has promised to transform Twitter by loosening the service’s content moderation rules, making its algorithm more transparent and nurturing subscription businesses, as well as laying off employees.
(with PTI inputs)
