Elon Musk reportedly fires top Twitter executives as he takes over company

Read More

Elon Musk has reportedly completed his $44bn takeover of Twitter, taking control of the company and firing several of the company’s top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal.

Several outlets, including Reuters, the Washington Post and the New York Times, reported on Thursday evening that Ned Segal, the chief financial officer, and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust and safety, were also fired, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Agrawal and Segal were in Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters when the deal closed and were escorted out, Reuters reported.

The firings follow reports Musk planned to eliminate nearly 75% of Twitter’s staff as part of his deal to take over the company, which Musk later refuted, telling employees he would not cut such a large portion of the staff.

Musk’s battle with Twitter began when he attempted to walk away from a deal to buy the company in May, starting a months-long standoff that was due to go to court before Musk made a dramatic U-turn and offered to purchase the company after all. Thursday’s shakeupcomes ahead of a Friday deadline to complete his purchase of the platform, and will give the world’s richest man control of an influential social media platform with more than 230 million users, and caps several tumultuous months of back and forth over whether he would buy the company.

On Wednesday, Musk paid a visit to the company’s San Francisco headquarters, carrying a sink and changed his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit”.

With Musks’s reported takeover of the company, attention will now turn to his plans for the platform, which plays an outsized role in the political and media landscape due to its following among journalists, commentators, celebrities and politicians.

Musk has already signalled that he will reverse a permanent ban on Donald Trump, reflecting his stance as a self-confessed “free speech absolutist”.

Musk signed a deal to buy Twitter on 25 April but he then became embroiled in a row with the company over the number of spam accounts on its platform, leading him to announce in July he was walking away from the transaction.

Twitter then sued Musk in Delaware, where the company is incorporated, to demand that he close the deal. Following a surprise change of mind by Musk as a court date approached, a Delaware judge then gave both sides until 28 October to close the deal.

More details soon …