Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter came after months of the announcement of his interest in buying the company, on-off deals, and a series of legal battles
Elon Musk became the new owner of the social media platform Thursday by completing a $44 billion deal, acquiring ahead of Friday’s deadline to complete the purchase of the platform. Twitter Chief Executive Officer Parag Agarwal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, the head of legal policy and trust are some of the top executives who are reportedly fired. Parag Agarwal became the CEO in the month of November, after working for almost a decade at the company as Chief Technology Officer.
His run as CEO was interrupted by Elon Musk coming in as a shareholder and apparent disagreements Musk had with the leadership. The acquisition of Twitter came after months of Musk’s announcement of his interest in buying the Californian company, on-off deals, and a series of legal battles. In March, Elon Musk became the largest shareholder of Twitter and expressed his opinions about changing the company and had continuous disagreements with Parag Agarwal, the CEO.
The month of April saw Musk’s intention of buying the company for a $44 billion offer which was rejected initially. Twitter, later on, decided to accept the offer and take the deal. Later months showed the fall of Twitter stocks rapidly and Musk accused the company of curtailing the freedom of speech, complained about the bots, and asked about the number of real users on Twitter. Musk tweeted that his priority would be to remove the spam bots from the social media platform.
Twitter later informed that spam and fake accounts comprise less than 5% of users. The deal started to come off and Musk in July announced that he wants to pull out of the deal which led Twitter to file a lawsuit against Musk as the deal was legally binding. The court battle did affect the company and many advertisers, who bring in most of the revenue for Twitter, began to wonder how many ads were actually shown to real people. Musk, in the end, decides to move forward with the deal and tweeted “Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app”.
Musk also tweeted that his intention of buying the company is not profit-oriented and stated that it was important for civilization to have a common and healthy platform where people could interact and debate on various beliefs. His tweet also shared that the platform would be inclusive and will be a space where individuals are free to express themselves adding. Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world “that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise”, stated Musk and ended the statement with a gratitude note to all the partners.
Musk having time until Friday, 28th October, closed the deal a day earlier and announced the same through his Tweet “the bird is freed”.
the bird is freed
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 28, 2022