WASHINGTON: After completing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc, Elon Musk has said that he intends to replace Parag Agrawal as CEO of the social media platform and also intends to reverse the permanent ban on users, according to a Bloomberg report.
Agrawal was fired along with other major executives upon completion of the takeover, Bloomberg reported on Friday citing a person familiar with the matter. According to multiple reports in US media, Twitter’s Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, its legal and policy executive, were also asked to go.
The Tesla and Space X owner is expected to remain CEO of Twitter in the interim period, but may eventually cede the role in the longer term, the report said.
Musk, ahead of his $44 billion Twitter acquisition deal, had dismissed speculation about why he’d buy the micro-blogging platform and his thoughts on advertising.
“The reason I acquired Twitter is that it is important to the future of civilisation to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far right wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society”, he said in a statement on Thursday.
The Tesla founder said that Twitter should be “warm and welcoming to all” and enable users to choose the experience they want to have. Further, Musk told advertisers that he wants the platform to be “the most respected advertising platform in the world.”
Meanwhile, on Wednesday Musk walked into the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco, carrying the bowl of a sink. This action was the object of several memes on the internet. Musk tweeted a video of himself carrying a kitchen sink and captioned it “let that sink in!” He also changed his Twitter profile to read “Chief Twit”.
In July, in a surprising turn of events, Elon Musk, who had long been showing his interest to buy Twitter, terminated the deal. The Tesla CEO did so by alleging that Twitter violated their mutual purchase agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its platform.
After Musk put out the deal termination announcement, the market saw a sharp decline. Later, Twitter sued Musk accusing him of using bots as a pretext to exit a deal.
Again, last week, Musk confirmed that he will move forward with the Twitter buyout at the originally agreed price of $54.20 per share. The Twitter deal legal proceedings had been put on hold by a judge overseeing the dispute until October 28. (ANI)