South African-born mega-billionaire Elon Musk has succeeded in his bid to take over Twitter and according to sources from within the company, staff members were informed they have six months’ job security.
When will Elon Musk take over Twitter?
This, according to Newsmax, was the internal comms that was reportedly sent around to staff members on Monday by CEO Parag Agrawal and board chairman Bret Taylor, after the social media giant provisionally accepted Musk’s $44 billion (est. R689 billion) bid.
”It’s important to acknowledge that all of you have many different feelings about what is happening. Some of you are concerned, some are you are excited, and some of you are waiting to see how this goes. I know this affects all of you personally. It is an emotional day, and I just want to acknowledge it.,” Agrawal and Taylor noted in the joint letter.
Staff members were reportedly assured that there would be no retrenchments for at least six months, which, essentially, is the amount of time it will take to finalise the takeover.
This turn of events left many staffers bewildered, renowned journalist Yashar Ali reported.
5. Another Twitter employee asks: “how did we go from poison pill to this so quickly?”
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) April 25, 2022
Remember, Twitter had adopted a ‘poison pill’ policy to delay Musk’s takeover bid by more than a year, shortly after he had made the initial bid on 14 April 2022.
Musk offered to reel Twitter back into becoming a private company with a buyout offer that stood at $54.20 per share, a price offering that was, at the time, 38% above Twitter’s stock close on 1 April 2022.
The poison pill, according to Bloomberg, was a measure used by Twitter to prevent Musk from owning more than 15% of the company. Well, it seems, the billionaire’s taunting about bringing free speech back to the platform and waging war against spam bots has miraculously swayed the ‘blue bird’s’ board.
Here’s what Musk tweeted following news of his takeover:
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
Musk is also listed as founder/owner of:
- Tesla Inc.
- Spacex
- OpenAI
- Neuralink
- The Boring Company
- Starlink