Elon Musk takes over Twitter after reportedly completing acquisition, begins firing people

Twit­ter, Inc. is now owned by Elon Musk.

The mega­bil­lion­aire com­plet­ed his acqui­si­tion of the social net­work­ing plat­form this evening after a failed attempt to back out of the deal that he struck sev­er­al months ago, which prompt­ed a law­suit by Twit­ter to force him to hon­or the terms of the deal and buy out the share­hold­ers. Musk recent­ly sig­naled he was ready to capit­u­late and recom­mit to the deal. It is now said to have closed.

Musk updat­ed his Twit­ter pro­file to declare him­self the “Chief Twit” and pro­ceed­ed to dis­miss most of Twit­ter’s exec­u­tive lead­er­ship: CEO Parag Agraw­al, CFO Ned Segal, Head of Legal, Pol­i­cy, and Trust Vijaya Gadde and Gen­er­al Coun­sel Sean Edgett. Agraw­al had been expect­ed to depart if and when Musk took over, but the mega­bil­lion­aire was­n’t sat­is­fied with mere­ly oust­ing the CEO.

Accord­ing to Bloomberg, in a vis­it to Twit­ter head­quar­ters yes­ter­day (which he pub­lished a video of him­self walk­ing into car­ry­ing a sink), Musk sought to reas­sure ner­vous employ­ees that he did not plan to fire 75% of them, as a recent report indi­cat­ed he had float­ed the idea of doing.

Twit­ter is cur­rent­ly a pub­lic com­pa­ny. Since Musk has bought out the share­hold­ers and is tak­ing the com­pa­ny pri­vate, Twit­ter will soon be delist­ed from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Its finances will become more opaque.

Musk has not said if he plans to appoint a CEO in the near future or run the com­pa­ny him­self. He is already the chief exec­u­tive offi­cer of Tes­la and SpaceX.

Musk was born into wealth in South Africa, made seri­ous mon­ey with the sale of Pay­Pal to eBay (an acqui­si­tion that, inter­est­ing­ly, he opposed), and has got­ten even rich­er with the help of the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed States, which has award­ed SpaceX lucra­tive con­tracts and sub­si­dized the growth of car­mak­er Tes­la — a com­pa­ny which Musk did not cre­ate but which he now con­trols.

The Musk/Twitter saga has had quite a few twists and turns. When Musk first sought to buy Twit­ter, the com­pa­ny tried to fend him off with a poi­son pill maneu­ver. But short­ly there­after, the board relent­ed and agreed to sell Twit­ter to Musk for a tidy sum. Not long after, how­ev­er, Musk tried to back out of the deal. Twit­ter then took Musk to court to force him to go through with the sale.

As the law­suit pro­gressed, Musk changed his mind about try­ing to back out of the deal. The Delaware Court of Chancery gave Musk time to nego­ti­ate with Twit­ter, and the nego­ti­a­tions have now appar­ent­ly come to fruition.

Right wing cheer­lead­ers for Musk, who has declared him­self to be a Repub­li­can, have been gloat­ing about the fir­ing of Agraw­al and oth­er Twit­ter exec­u­tives, com­plete­ly ignor­ing the fact that Agrawal’s fir­ing means that Agraw­al and Twit­ter lead­er­ship beat Elon Musk. Musk was, after all, try­ing to get out of the deal, and he failed. Agrawal’s over­rid­ing recent goal as CEO was to force Musk to hon­or the agree­ment he signed. Agraw­al and the board emerged victorious.

Agraw­al will leave the com­pa­ny with a huge gold­en para­chute (assum­ing Musk isn’t suc­cess­ful in nuk­ing his exit pack­age) and the board will dissolve.

Every­one who agreed to this deal is seem­ing­ly get­ting what they want­ed, even Musk… who has moved past his regrets about over­pay­ing and is now rel­ish­ing own­ing one of the world’s most used social net­work­ing platforms.

Musk is pay­ing a huge amount of mon­ey for Twit­ter: over $44 bil­lion. The world com­mu­ni­ty and Twit­ter users may not be well served by this takeover, but Twit­ter’s fired exec­u­tives will like­ly be walk­ing away with plen­ty of money.