After the deal to take Twitter private under billionaire Elon Musk closes, Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) Chief Executive Parag Agrawal told staff on Monday that the social media company’s future is unknown. He was addressing at a company-wide town hall gathering, which Reuters was able to hear.
Musk will meet with Twitter employees for a question-and-answer session at a later date, according to the firm.
Many queries concerning Musk’s ambitions for the company, the likelihood of layoffs, and the board’s rationale for the transaction were deflected by Agrawal as issues that should be directed to Musk.
Musk has stated that he believes Twitter should be a free expression platform. Employees questioned Agrawal if former US President Donald Trump, who was banned from Twitter permanently last year, would be able to return after Musk took charge.
“Once the deal closes, we don’t know which direction the platform will go,” Agrawal said, referring to the question regarding Trump. “I believe when we have an opportunity to speak with Elon, it’s a question we should address with him.”
Agrawal also assured employees that no layoffs were in the works.
The arrangement with Musk prioritized “operational continuity” until the acquisition was closed, according to Bret Taylor, the chair of Twitter’s board of directors.
“I think we feel very comfortable that (the deal) gives this team the ability to continue to make the company successful in between signing and closing the transaction,” Taylor stated.
Elon Musk, the company’s largest individual shareholder with 9.2 percent, has previously declared that he had lost faith in the present management and that Twitter’s true potential could not be realized under them. He wanted to take the company private so he could have complete control over it and steer it to its greatest potential.
The board of Twitter has tried everything it could to thwart Elon Musk’s takeover offer, including using the poison pill method. However, the amount Musk offered, together with the mood of the majority of Twitter shareholders, prompted the board of directors to act.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, as well as the co-creator of Neuralink and OpenAI and the founder of The Boring Company, is now the owner of the social media behemoth Twitter.
Twitter has locked modifications to its source code just hours after shareholders accepted Elon Musk’s 44 billion dollar proposal, according to Bloomberg. The move was made, according to the journal, to prevent dissatisfied Twitter employees from making unapproved alterations to the platform.