Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Twitter’s biggest shareholder, will no longer serve on the social media company’s board of directors, CEO Parag Agrawal said late Sunday, in a surprising change following the announcement. last week that Tesla and SpaceX had been named CEOs. to the board.
“We announced on Tuesday that Elon would be appointed to the Board subject to a background check and formal acceptance. Elon’s appointment to the board would officially become effective on April 9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board,” Agrawal he said in a tweet Sunday night.
“We value and will always value the input of our shareholders, whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our largest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.”
In what appears to be his official commentary on development, the world’s richest man offered a one-letter statement“🤭,” an emoji whose popular interpretations include “surprised,” “shocked,” and “yikes,” according to Urban Dictionary.
Sunday’s revelation from Agrawal, who said last week that he had been interacting with Musk for “a few weeks” before announcing his appointment to the board, follows a series of unusual tweets from the SpaceX executive over the weekend in the who wondered aloud if his more than 80 million followers were Twitter dying, citing the low frequency of tweets from some of the social network’s most popular personalities.
Musk also asked his followers if Twitter should turn its San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter, sparking a discussion that saw the participation of a wide range of industry figures, including Amazon and the founder of Blue. Origin, Jeff Bezos. Tweets over the weekend from Musk, who identified his investment in Twitter as “passive” and, according to the timeline shared by Agrawal, had already decided not to join Twitter’s board, nevertheless seemed to suggest that he is actively thinking about Twitter and leading conversations. on the main steps that the company must undertake.
Joining Twitter’s board would have required Musk to limit his overall ownership of the social network to a maximum of 14.9% while on the board and 90 days after leaving, under the terms of the deal Twitter disclosed. In the statutory presentation (PDF), Twitter said it planned to name Musk to its board for a term ending in 2024.
“So happy to have Elon join the Twitter forum! He cares deeply about our world and Twitter’s role in it,” said Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s co-founder and former CEO, of the news that Musk has joined Twitter’s board of directors. “Parag and Elon lead from the heart and will be an amazing team.” Dorsey has yet to comment on the new development.
Musk has bought 9.2% of Twitter shares, according to a presentation he made earlier this month. Twitter shares soared as much as 30% on news of Musk’s stock purchase, and another 10% when his appointment to the board was announced the next day.
“The Board and I had many discussions about bringing Elon onto the board, and with Elon directly,” Agrawal said in a tweet Sunday night. “We were excited to collaborate and clarify the risks. We also believed that having Elon as a trustee of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interest of the company and all of our shareholders, was the best way forward.”
Twitter has 11 board members, including Dorsey, Agrawal, Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor and Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durban. At the time of publication, Musk was still on the list as a board member on its investor relations website.
Elon didn’t say why he was investing in the company, but the timing of the revelation followed him raising concerns about free speech and censorship on Twitter. However, analysts at Bernstein believed that Musk’s interest in Twitter was primarily personal.
“He joins more than 15 billionaires in media ownership, including Bezos with WaPo. We see the interest as a potential distraction for Musk and TSLA shareholders, given that Musk is possibly already overcommitted, and his fervor for the censorship/free speech issue is running high,” they wrote in a note.
Over the weekend, Musk also suggested that Twitter should consider giving an authentication checkmark to anyone who signs up for the company’s $3 monthly subscription service, Twitter Blue. “And no ads,” Musk said, describing Twitter Blue’s features. “The power of corporations to dictate policy is greatly increased if Twitter relies on advertising money to survive.”
Some employees were concerned that Musk would become involved with the company, according to reports. To ease his worries, Agrawal had supposedly advertised internally that Musk had agreed to a question-and-answer session with them.
Reference-techcrunch.com