Musk Consolidates Energy at Twitter After Board Is Dismissed

(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk consolidated his management of Twitter Inc. on Monday after the complete board was dismissed.

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Musk, 51, accomplished his buy of Twitter final week for $44 billion and instantly began molding the corporate to his liking. One of many first steps he took was to fireside 4 of probably the most senior executives of the corporate, together with Parag Agrawal, the chief government officer. Calling himself Chief Twit, Musk plans to successfully run the corporate himself within the instant time period, folks accustomed to his plans have stated.

On Monday, Musk turned the only director of the social media firm after the elimination of all 9 different board members, in accordance with the phrases of the merger settlement, in accordance with a securities submitting. It wasn’t clear who Musk would nominate to fill the board. On the different corporations he runs, together with Tesla Inc., the boards are filled with Musk loyalists. His brother Kimbal Musk, is a board member at Tesla, for instance.

Because of the closing of the merger, Twitter will buy excellent 3.875% senior notes due 2027 and 5% senior notes due 2030 at a suggestion value of 101% of principal plus accrued and unpaid curiosity, in accordance with the submitting. The bond agreements required Twitter to supply to purchase again its debt within the occasion of a change in command of the corporate. Musk has additionally requested a choose to dismiss a lawsuit over his try to tug out of the acquisition now that the deal has closed.

Musk’s first few days on the job have been crammed with rumor and hypothesis, together with about how he’ll deal with content material moderation on Twitter and what number of jobs he’ll minimize in an effort to manage prices. Considerations over huge layoffs swirled within the run-up to Musk’s take-private transaction, when potential traders had been instructed that he’d remove 75% of the workforce. Musk later denied that the cuts could be that deep, although he hasn’t elaborated on the plans. In latest weeks, Musk has hinted at his staffing priorities, saying he needs to deal with the core product.

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Simply three days in to his new job, the billionaire’s views on content material moderation had been additionally being examined after he posted and deleted a tweet spreading a baseless anti-LGBTQ conspiracy idea in regards to the latest assault on the husband of Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The episode underscored the pressures that Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist,” now faces in operating the favored social media web site — significantly in learn how to place limits on misinformation and hate speech on its service. Musk has pledged to advertisers that Twitter gained’t grow to be a “free-for-all hellscape” underneath his management however on the identical time pronounced that unfettered speech needs to be the norm on the location.

Musk has additionally been busy making adjustments to the Twitter product. He has instructed engineers to work on rebooting the looping-video app Vine, Axios reported, and he apparently needs to remove the blue badges of verified customers in the event that they don’t pay as a lot as $20 a month for the location’s new subscription service Twitter Blue, in accordance with experiences in The Verge and Platformer.

–With help from Kurt Wagner and Davey Alba.

(Updates with experiences of Vine comeback and the price of the blue examine in last paragraph.)

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