Billionaire Elon Musk is planning to take over the role of chief executive officer (CEO) at Twitter, the third tech giant along with Tesla Inc and SpaceX in his kitty.
After formally completing the USD 44 billion acquisition of the social media behemoth, Musk intends to replace Parag Agrawal whom he reportedly fired barely hours back, as per a report in Bloomberg.
Apart from Parag, Twitter’s head of legal, policy and trust Vijaya Gadde, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and general counsel Sean Edgett have been shown the exit down soon after the announcement of the Twitter deal.
Parag, Segal and Edgett were reportedly escorted out of the Twitter office.
The Tesla chief is expected to remain CEO in the interim but may eventually assure the role in the longer term, the report said quoting an unidentified person in the know of the matter.
Musk’s takeover of Twitter marks the culmination of nearly six months of public and court squabble, finally putting the world’s richest man on the help of the social media network.
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According to the report, Musk also plans to revoke the policy of putting permanent bans on users. “Because he does not believe in lifelong prohibitions,” said the source cited above.
If it happens, former US president Donald Trump and other people shunted out of Twitter earlier may be allowed to return to the platform. However, the source said it was not clear whether the policy would include Trump.
Notably, now-sacked Twitter head of legal and policy Vijaya Gadde is said to have been instrumental in the removal of the Republican leader after the riots at US Capitol on January 6 last year.
After firing top Twitter executive, Musk, who is famous on the platform for his cryptic one-liner tweets, posted: “the bird is freed.”
Before finalising the deal, Musk posted a video on the platform featuring him walking into the Twitter headquarters with a big grin and carrying a porcelain sink. “Let that sink in,” he tweeted before changing the description of his Twitter account to “Chief Twit”.
In April, Twitter agreed to accept Musk’s offer to take the company private. A month later, Musk pushed for the agreement to be cancelled, accusing Twitter of misleading him about the number of “bots” — a charge rejected by the company. It led to Agarwal dragging him to a court to hold him to the terms of the takeover deal, subsequently a trial for October to decide whether the agreement would be finalised.
Musk intended to lay off three-fourths of Twitter’s workforce, reported The Washington Post.