Elon Musk Reversal Following Last Week’s Revelation That He Had Become Twitter’s Largest Shareholder
TECHDIGEST – Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and the largest shareholder of Twitter, will no longer be joining the social media firm’s board, CEO Parag Agrawal said late Sunday, in a surprising reversal following last week’s announcement that the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive had been appointed to the panel.
Recall, Musk has purchases 9.2% of Twitter Stock, according to a filing he made earlier this month. Twitter shares soared as much as 30% on the news of Musk buying shares, and another 10% when his appointment to the board was announced the following.
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The Sunday disclosure from Agrawal, who said last week that he had been engaging with Musk for “a few weeks” before announcing his appointment to the board, follows a series of unusual tweets from the SpaceX executive over the weekend in which he wondered aloud to his over u80 million followers if Twitter was dying, citing low frequency of tweets from some of the most popular personalities on the social network.
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“We announced on Tuesday that Elon would be appointed to the Board contingent on a background check and formal acceptance. Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board,” Agrawal said in a tweet on Sunday night . “ We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.”
In what appears to be his official comment on the development, the world’s richest man offered in a single letter statement in a since -deleted tweet, “????,” an emoji whose popular interpretations include “surprised,” “shocked,” according to Urban Dictionary.
Joining Twitter’s board would have required Musk to cap his overall ownership of the social network at a maximum of 14.9% while he remained on the board and 90 days after the departure, according to terms of the agreement Twitter disclosed. In the regulatory filing ,Twitter said it planned to appoint musk to its board for a term that ends in 2024.
“The Board and I had many discussions about Elon joining the board, and with Elon directly,” Agrawal said in a tweet Sunday night. “We were excited to collaborate and clear about the risks. We also believed that having Elon as a fiduciary of the company where he, like all board members, has to act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders, was the best path forward.”
