Elon Musk has formally completed his acquisition of Twitter, buying the company for $44 billion US dollars ($68 billion AUD) and immediately firing several top executives at the company including CEO Parag Agrawal.
Finance chief Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust, and safety were also immediately fired, both including Twitter’s CEO having left the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
In April, Musk proposed acquiring the company and taking it private, and Twitter accepted. However, Musk had second thoughts and alleged that the company failed to disclose the number of spam and fake accounts on the platform.
Because of this, Twitter sued Musk stating in court that, he “refuses to honour his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
In the months since April, Musk changed his mind and decided to pursue his acquisition only if the platform dropped its litigation. A Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled earlier in October that Musk had until October 28th to complete the deal or head to trial.
Earlier this week, Musk wrote on the platform reassuring advertisers that the platform would not become somewhere where anything can be said with no consequences.
“The reason I acquired Twitter is because it is important to the future of civilization to have a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence,” he said.
“There is currently great danger that social media will splinter into far-right wing and far left-wing echo chambers that generate more hate and divide our society.”
Overnight, investors were informed by the New York Stock Exchange that it would suspend trading in shares of Twitter before the opening of the market in anticipation of Twitter going private under Musk.
Musk has updated his Twitter bio to “Chief Twit.”
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