Elon Musk has officially completed his purchase of Twitter, and fired a few of the company’s top executives in the process.
As reported by The Washington Post, a person familiar with the matter has said Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform resulted in him firing CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s head of legal policy, trust, and safety. At the moment it’s unclear who will replace the executives, although CNBC has reported that Musk himself is now officially in charge of Twitter. For context, Gadde was the one that ultimately decided to ban Donald Trump from Twitter permanently.
Late Thursday night, Elon Musk tweeted “the bird is freed,” in an apparent reference to his takeover.
The billionaire first proposed his takeover of Twitter in April, announcing he wanted to buy the company for $44 billion and take it private. Shortly after that, Musk started backing away from the deal, citing that the company had failed to disclose the proper number of fake and spam accounts on the platforms.
As Musk announced he was terminating the deal, Twitter responded with a lawsuit, alleging he “refuses to honour his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
The two have traded words ever since, until in October Musk announced, once again, that he planned to follow through with his purchase. In the face of a nasty court battle, a judge ruled that Musk had until October 28 to complete his purchase, or head to trial.
Now it looks like Elon Musk has just barely met that deadline, but how he intends to pay for the purchase, and what it means for Twitter remains to be seen. Cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance announced Friday that it intends to be an equity investor in Musk’s purchase, telling CNBC “We’re excited to be able to help Elon realize a new vision for Twitter. We aim to play a role in bringing social media and Web3 together in order to broaden the use and adoption of crypto and blockchain technology.”
We’ll likely see Elon Musk talk more about his Twitter plan in the coming days.
