The New York Times says Musk, the world’s richest man, closed the deal to buy Twitter on Thursday
New York, October 28
Billionaire Elon Musk has completed his USD 44 billion takeover of Twitter and fired the social media company’s four top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal and legal executive Vijaya Gadde, a PTI report in The Tribune, Chandigarh, says.
The New York Times said Musk closed the deal to buy Twitter on Thursday.
The report said Musk “started house cleaning at Twitter with the firings of at least four top executives”. They are Agrawal, Gadde, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and General Counsel Sean Edgett.
“At least one of the executives who was fired was escorted out of Twitter’s office,” the report said.
With this deal, a cloud of uncertainty hanging over Twitter’s business, employees and shareholders for most of this year, has finally been dispersed year.
Delays in the sale since April this year, were mostly on account of concerns about the number of bots on the platform and later allegations raised by a company whistleblower.
Agrawal, 38, became Twitter CEO in November last year after the social media site’s co-founder Jack Dorsey had stepped down. An IIT Bombay and Stanford alumnus, Agrawal had joined Twitter over a decade ago when there were fewer than 1,000 employees in the company.
“Agrawal, who was appointed Twitter’s chief executive last year, had clashed” with Musk “publicly and privately in recent months about the takeover”, the NYT report said.
Musk had also “singled out” Gadde, 48, “criticising her for her role in content moderation decisions at the company”, it added.
When former US President Donald Trump’s Twitter account was permanently suspended in January last year, Hyderabad-born Gadde was at the forefront of this dramatic decision undertaken within days of the attempted insurrection by pro-Trump supporters at the US Capitol.
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone thanked Agrawal, Segal and Gadde for their “massive contribution” to the business.
“Thank you to @paraga, @vijaya , and @nedsegal for the collective contribution to Twitter. Massive talents, all, and beautiful humans each!” Stone tweeted.
Musk arrived at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco on Wednesday and had been meeting with engineers and advertising executives.
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