Elon Musk accomplished the $44 billion buy of Twitter in the present day, capping a months-long saga that resulted in Twitter suing Musk to power him to honor their merger settlement. Musk’s first course of enterprise was to fireplace high executives.

“Musk fired Chief Government Parag Agrawal and Chief Monetary Officer Ned Segal after the deal closed” on Thursday, The Wall Avenue Journal wrote. Twitter authorized chief Vijaya Gadde and common counsel Sean Edgett had been additionally reportedly fired by Musk. It isn’t but clear who would be the CEO underneath Musk’s possession.

Musk feuded with Agrawal whereas he was attempting to get out of the merger contract. In August, he challenged the then-Twitter CEO to a public debate about Twitter’s spam-account knowledge. Twitter caught with its lawsuit in opposition to Musk as an alternative, and the courtroom case helped power Musk to finish the deal. Musk had additionally posted tweets with criticism of Gadde’s strategy to content material moderation.

Musk accomplished the deal a day after visiting Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco. Twitter workers had been circulating an open letter criticizing Musk after a Washington Publish report stating that “Musk instructed potential buyers in his deal to purchase the corporate that he deliberate to do away with practically 75 % of Twitter’s 7,500 staff, whittling the corporate right down to a skeleton employees of simply over 2,000.” Throughout his Twitter go to, he reportedly instructed employees that he is not going to be firing 75 % of them.

Twitter is ready to turn out to be a non-public firm now that Musk accomplished the deal. He has stated he is shopping for Twitter to guard free speech, however he defines free speech in a manner that means he is keen to limit speech in any nation the place the federal government requires him to take action.

Hours earlier than finishing the acquisition, Musk posted a message to advertisers assuring them that Twitter is not going to “turn out to be a free-for-all hellscape.”

Merger caps months of combating

The deal was accomplished in the future earlier than a court-imposed deadline. The saga started with Musk shopping for 9.2 % of Twitter inventory in March. Twitter then struck a take care of Musk to have him be a part of the board of administrators whereas prohibiting from shopping for greater than 14.9 % of the corporate’s inventory.

In an indication of issues to come back, Musk pulled out of that deal and began laying groundwork to purchase the corporate outright. He provided to purchase Twitter in mid-April, claiming he wished to protect free speech on the platform.

Twitter administrators shortly adopted a poison tablet that made it troublesome for anybody to purchase over 15 % of the corporate’s inventory in any “transaction not accredited by the Board.” Musk continued his makes an attempt at a takeover and on April 25 he signed a deal with the Twitter board to purchase the corporate for $44 billion.

Musk’s second ideas emerged shortly. On Might 13, Musk stated the deal to buy Twitter is “briefly on maintain” whereas he awaited particulars on the variety of spam and faux accounts on the positioning. Twitter’s board held agency, saying it will “implement the merger settlement.”

Musk spent the following weeks claiming that Twitter lied in its estimate that fewer than 5 % of its monetizable each day lively customers (mDAU) are spam or pretend. He by no means disproved the mDAU statistic however tried to terminate the merger settlement on July 8, claiming that Twitter “made false and deceptive representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when coming into into the Merger Settlement.”