After six months of public and legal battle over the purchase, Elon Musk has finally completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc., according to people familiar with the situation, placing the world's richest man in charge of the faltering social network.
Twitter will run as a private firm and
shareholders will receive $54.20 per share. The conclusion brings to an end a
complicated process that started in January with the billionaire quietly
building up a sizable investment in the business, his mounting displeasure with
the way it's handled, and an eventual merger agreement that he later spent
months trying to undo.
On October 4, Musk decided to move forward with
the terms he had first suggested, and a Delaware Chancery Court judge granted
the two parties until October 28 to complete the transaction.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX, now has
power over Twitter, which he frequently uses but openly criticizes and which he
has promised to drastically alter. Shares of the company are not anticipated to
trade on the New York Stock Exchange anymore.
One of Musk's first actions was to replace the
leadership.According to those with knowledge of the situation, departures from
Twitter include Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Head of Legal, Policy and
Trust, Vijaya Gadde, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, who joined the
company in 2017, and General Counsel Sean Edgett, who has served as General
Counsel since 2012.
Because many of Musk's suggestions for changing
the company are incompatible with the way it has been conducted for years, the
company's operations will immediately become disrupted by his ownership. He has
stated that he wants to protect "free expression" on the social
network, which probably entails lowering the criteria for content moderation.
He also aims to reinstate certain well-known accounts that were suspended from
Twitter for disobeying the rules, including the former President Trump's. More
generally, Musk's activities pose a threat to reverse years of Twitter's
attempts to curtail bullying and harassment on the social media site.
As the deadline drew closer, Musk started to
personalize the business, tweeting a video of himself entering the office and
altering his platform designation to "Chief Twit." According to those
with knowledge of the situation, he scheduled meetings between Tesla engineers
and Twitter product executives and planned to speak to the workforce on Friday.
In an effort to ensure that nothing about the product changes prior to the deal
completing, Twitter's engineers were no longer able to make code modifications
as of noon on Thursday in San Francisco, the people added.
Since the merger was revealed in April, Twitter
staff have been preparing for layoffs, and Musk mentioned the concept of cost
reductions to banking partners when he was initially raising money for the
deal. According to a person familiar with the situation this month, Musk has
informed certain prospective investors that he expects Twitter's income to
double within three years and that he aims to slash 75% of the company's
current personnel of 7,500.
According to people familiar with the situation,
Musk informed employees when he visited Twitter's headquarters on Wednesday
that he does not want to fire 75% of the workforce when he takes over the firm.
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