Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
After months of drama, Mr Elon Musk has now taken charge of Twitter, signifying his $44 billion acquisition of the company.
With the acquisition, Twitter CEO, Mr Parag Agrawal, and finance chief, Mr Ned Segal, have been relieved of their duties, while Mr Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy, trust, and safety, was also fired.
Yesterday, the billionaire tweeted, “the bird is freed,” in an apparent reference to the takeover being completed.
This would bring an end to a tumultuous seven-month tussle that began in April when Twitter accepted Musk’s proposal to buy the social media service and take it private.
However, the Tesla CEO soon began sowing doubt about his intentions to follow through with the agreement, alleging that the company failed to adequately disclose the number of spam and fake accounts on the service.
When Mr Musk said he was terminating the deal, Twitter sued the billionaire, alleging he “refuses to honour his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
In the ensuing months, Twitter and Musk would trade barbs via their attorneys as the two parties were slated to head to Delaware’s Court of Chancery to determine the fate of the company and whether it would end up in the Tesla chief’s hands.
Earlier in October, he changed his heart and said he wanted to pursue his acquisition of Twitter at the original price of $54.20 a share if the social messaging service dropped its litigation.
A Delaware Chancery Court judge eventually ruled that Mr Musk had until October 28 to cement the Twitter deal or head to trial.
It is still unclear how Mr Musk will finance the deal. Earlier this year, He secured some debt financing from a number of investment banks. He also got the backing of some high-profile investors, including venture capital firms and technology CEOs.
On Thursday, Mr Musk wrote a message intended to reassure advertisers that social messaging services wouldn’t devolve into “a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!”
“The reason I acquired Twitter is that 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,” Mr Musk said in the message.
“There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into a far-right wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”
Mr Musk arrived at the Twitter headquarters earlier this week carrying a sink and documented the event on Twitter, saying, “Entering Twitter HQ – let that sink in!”
As of the press time, Business Post understands that Mr Musk also updated his Twitter description to “Chief Twit”.
