The drama is finally over!
Twitter is now an Elon Musk company. After months and months of what seemed like never-ending drama, the acquisition of the social media site was finalised late last night. Ahead of the takeover, Musk showed up at the company’s office with a sink.
In his first course of action, the billionaire fired Parag Agrawal and his chief financial officer, Ned Segal. Both of them were in the building and were escorted out by security, according to Reuters. Along with the duo, Musk also let go of Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s policy chief whom the billionaire had accused publicly. Also gone are Sean Edgett, the general counsel and customer officer Sarah Personette.
While their exit may have been humiliating, Insider reports that they did receive rather handsome payouts. As per reports, Agrawal was paid $38.7 million, Segal received $25.4 million, Gadde got $12.5 million and Personette got a paycheck of $11.2 million.
The saga started back in April when the billionaire expressed his interest in buying Twitter but later tried to back out in May. He then changed his mind again, filing a letter with SEC to reaffirm his commitment to buy the company. All of this led to Twitter shareholders filing a class action lawsuit against Musk, which might get dropped now.
There are many questions which remain unanswered on how the future of Twitter might look like. The Tesla CEO has shown interest in transforming Twitter into a WeChat-like platform. There are also fears that the billionaire may lift the ban on former president Donald Trump. However, it is unlikely that Trump might want to come back.
Apart from firing top executives, Musk is also expected to lay the axe on several employees to cut costs and increase revenue. He will be addressing the staff on Friday where he’s expected to share more details about his plans.