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| Musk officially buys Twitter and recommends firing of senior officials |
Prominent billionaire Elon Musk officially took over Twitter on Friday after completing the acquisition of the company announced earlier this year.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) upheld the order after the US dollar stock TWTR was removed from the New York Stock Exchange after multiple agencies reported the news that many had been waiting for for a few days.
As for Musk, who is also the world's richest man, his Twitter career began with the dismissal of senior officials, including CEO Parag Agra, who succeeded company founder Jack Dorsey and Parag Agrawal, and chief financial officer Ned Segal. None of the company's security personnel had to move them outside of Twitter's headquarters.
Musk also fired Twitter policy director Vijaya Gade, whom Musk had previously publicly criticized. General Counsel Sean Edgett has also been fired, citing his sources, according to the New York Times. According to Bloomberg, he was the last person brought to the company's headquarters by security.
BusinessInsider reports that Sarah Personnier, the company's chief customer officer, has also been fired. The site also reported that company officials received huge sums of money to leave the company, with Agrawal receiving $38.7 million, Sejal $25.4 million, Jaid $12.5 million and Biruni $11.2 million.
Musk offered to take over Twitter last April, then tried to walk away from the deal in May. Then, in October, he changed his mind again, assuring the Securities and Exchange Commission that it was committed to the original deal.
Musk has met with Twitter employees over the past few days and is expected to speak with them again on Friday as Twitter becomes his property as part of a $44 billion deal.
Now Musk, who also runs electric car makers Tesla and SpaceX, is waiting to do something with Twitter, and according to an earlier Wall Street Journal report, Musk will be laying off three-quarters of the company's workforce that percentage. But it is said that 20% of the company's employees would quit if they were forced to work in the company's offices.
Twitter's stance on free speech has been called into question, with Musk previously saying he would change the way Twitter monitors content and possibly relax various policies that led former President Donald Trump to permanently ban the use of free speech.