Shortly after buying Twitter, Elon Musk took sole control of the short message service, according to a statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission. This is Musk’s fifth company to head up alongside electric car maker Tesla, space company SpaceX, brain chip startup Neuralink and tunnel builder Boring Company.
According to another mandatory notification, Musk also dissolved the board of directors. However, this measure is “only temporary,” he wrote on Twitter. At the weekend he complained that there were ten managers for every programmer on the short message service. The short message service did not initially want to comment on the question of how long Musk will be head of Twitter or whether he will appoint someone else.
After a month-long tug-of-war, the eccentric richest man in the world has officially become the owner of the social media network for a few days, which cost him $44 billion (44.38 billion euros). Musk immediately fired Twitter boss Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal and chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde. Sales chief Sarah Personette tweeted Tuesday that she resigned from her post last week.
Musk had accused Twitter executives of misleading him and investors about the number of fake accounts on the social media platform. According to official information, there are less than five percent “fake accounts”. In the dispute over the documents, Musk had threatened to call off the takeover announced in the spring.
According to The Washington Post, the layoffs are not limited to top management. A quarter of the 7,000 jobs on Twitter would be up for grabs. The New York Times reported that Musk is pushing the tube on layoffs to avoid paying out stock options. The deadline is November 1st. “That’s wrong,” the self-proclaimed “Chief Twit” countered on Twitter. The short message service could not be reached for comment on the matter.