Elon Musk has fired the entire board of directors at Twitter after leading a $44 billion deal to take the social media giant private.
Tesla CEO Musk has become the sole director after sacking nine people from their roles including CEO Parag Agrawal and chairman Bret Taylor.
Baroness Martha Lane Fox, founder of lastminute.com and current president of the British Chambers of Commerce, is among those to be ousted.
Musk, who has changed his profile on Twitter to read ‘Twitter Complaint Hotline Operator’, is expected to significantly cut Twitter’s workforce. The Washington Post reports that 25% of the company’s staff are at risk in the first round of layoffs.
Rather than cashing out his 2.4% stake in Twitter, valued at $978m by the takeover, co-founder Jack Dorsey has rolled them into the new private company, according to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Dorsey, who left Twitter’s board in May, endorsed Musk’s takeover when it was first approved by the then management team: “Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness.”
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Dorsey is the CEO of several blockchain- and crypto-focused companies including Square parent Block, increasing speculation that Twitter will now embrace crypto payments. The price of Dogecoin, Musk’s favourite coin, has rocketed 141% in the last week.
Binance CEO Chengpeng Zhao also recently stated that his company will help bring Twitter into Web3 after it contributed $500m to the deal.
Another consortium partner is venture capital giant a16z. Sriram Krishnan, general partner for its crypto arm, tweeted that he is helping Musk at Twitter.
“I (and a16z) believe this is a hugely important company and can have great impact on the world and Elon is the person to make it happen,” Krishnan – who worked at Twitter from 2017 to 2019 – and also has stints at Snap, Facebook and Microsoft – added.
Early proposals for changes at Twitter include introducing a monthly subscription of $20 for blue verification ticks and a purge of accounts which have been inactive for some time.