Elon Musk dissolves Twitter board, becomes new CEO

After acquiring Twitter for $44 billion (€44.4 billion), Elon Musk dissolved the company's board and pronounced himself in charge of the social media giant.

In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk stated that he will serve as chief executive of Twitter. Earlier, he had also changed his Twitter bio to "Chief Twit."

Musk stated in the documents that the "consummation of the merger" occurred on October 27, after which he "became the sole director of Twitter."

Who has Musk replaced?

Late last week, Musk fired the previous Twitter CEO, Parag Agrawal, and other top company officials. They were promptly escorted out of Twitter headquarters by company security following Musk's decision.

In his SEC filing taking the company private after nearly a decade of being publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), Musk noted the ouster of Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou from the company board. 

Without giving details, though, Musk said in a tweet that the board was being dissolved only temporarily.

What other changes are taking place at Twitter?

The takeover of Twitter by Musk, who also owns SpaceX and Tesla, took months of negotiations before he finally closed the deal on Thursday.

Under the merger agreement, Musk has also offered to buy back all of Twitter's outstanding bonds, according to the SEC filing.

Shortly after buying Twitter, Musk met engineers from Tesla to analyze Twitter's software code.

After Musk closed the deal Thursday, The Washington Post reported he was also planning to fire some 75% of Twitter's 7,500 employees.

The new Twitter boss has also hinted at monetizing Twitter's identity verification feature by making users pay for the "blue check" used to verify prominent accounts such as those of journalists, media organizations, brands and more.

As per a report published by The Verge, the subscription fee to use the paid subscription service, known as Twitter Blue, could increase from $5 to $20.

On Sunday, Musk tweeted,  "The whole verification process is being revamped right now."

mf/ar (Reuters, AFP)