The Bird is Freed! Musk Becomes Twitter CEO, Set to Lift Ban on Trump

Ololade Adeyanju/

Elon Musk yesterday formally took control of Twitter, having made a high-profile visit to the San Francisco headquarters the day before – and tweeting yesterday night: “The bird is freed”.

As soon as his $44 billion takeover was finalized yesterday night, Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal, the chief financial officer Ned Segal, and the top lawyer for the firm, Vijaya Gadde, were given the boot.

Sean Edgett, the company’s general counsel, and chief customer officer Sarah Personette were also pushed out 

His next move will be to restore Twitter users who have been handed lifetime bans from the platform – among them former president Donald Trump. 

Musk himself will take the role of CEO, according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg – although he may cede the role in the long term.

Musk had publicly criticized the leadership team and challenged them over their policies, in particular regarding censorship.

The fired Twitter executives were hastily shuttled from the building, sources told The Washington Post. 

Twitter’s engineers could no longer make changes to code as of noon yesterday in San Francisco, part of an effort to ensure that nothing about the product changed ahead of the deal closing. 

In a securities filing on April 14, Musk said he did not have confidence in Twitter’s management and initially vowed to sack 75 percent of the workforce when he formally bought the tech giant. 

Agrawal, who has repeatedly clashed with Musk over the number of users Twitter has, will walk away with $42 million, according to an analysis by research firm, Equilar, earlier this year.

Ex-CFO Segal – who was the man behind Donald Trump’s Twitter ban – also received the handsome sum of $25.4 million after being fired by Musk yesterday evening.

This deal completion comes at the eleventh hour – just one day before Musk was going to be dragged back into court after being sued by Twitter for a back-and-forth he had over whether he was going to buy the company. 

Billionaire Musk is set to hold a company-wide town hall meeting today.

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