Elon Musk Officially Takes Over as Twitter CEO After $44 Bln Acquisition

By Staff, Agencies

World's richest man Elon Musk will now act as the new CEO of the microblogging website Twitter, the American business tycoon said in a filing on the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.

Musk's reign as the new owner of Twitter began last week and immediately after taking charge, he sacked Twitter's previous boss, Parag Agrawal, and other top executives of the San Francisco-based company.

Other than Agrawal, Twitter's legal, policy and trust department chief Vijaya Gadde, Chief Financial Officer [CFO] Ned Segal, and the company's general counsel Sean Edgett were all removed from their respective posts.

The filing further revealed that Musk is now the only director left on Twitter's board.

"The following persons, who were directors of Twitter prior to the effective time of the merger, are no longer directors of Twitter: Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou," the billionaire said in the filing.

Musk, however, clarified that his decision to dissolve Twitter's board was "temporary", without further elaboration.

The changes to Twitter come within a week of Musk completing his $44 billion acquisition of one of the world's most popular social media networks.

A day ahead of his acquisition of Twitter, the Tesla founder had changed his bio on the platform to "Chief Twit" in an oblique reference to his takeover.

In the past, Musk criticized the platform for taking too long to remove bot or spam accounts.

His other major criticism of Twitter's policy has been the social media giant's policy of levying a permanent ban on individuals like former US President Donald Trump over "hate speech or risk of inciting violence."