Twitter’s CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Elon Musk has decided not to join the board.
Musk’s appointment was set to go into effect on Saturday after he announced last week that he had bought a 9.2% stake in the social media platform.
However, Mr Agrawal tweeted: “Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board.”
Mr Agrawal said Twitter offered Mr Musk a seat on its board as the company believed it was “the best path forward”, with board members having to “act in the best interests of the company and all our shareholders”.
Addressing Mr Musk’s decision, Mr Agrawal said: “I believe this is for the best”.
“We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our board or not,” he added. “Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.”
Elon has decided not to join our board. I sent a brief note to the company, sharing with you all here. pic.twitter.com/lfrXACavvk
— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) April 11, 2022
Just over an hour after Mr Agrawal’s announcement, Musk cryptically tweeted a single emoji. The tweet has since been deleted.
Over the weekend, Musk suggested changes to the Twitter Blue premium subscription service, including slashing its price, banning advertising and giving the option to pay in the cryptocurrency dogecoin.
Musk also asked his more than 81m followers whether Twitter is “dying” and if its headquarters should be turned into a homeless shelter.
He also created a poll asking whether the letter “w” should be removed from Twitter, with the only options being “yes” and “of course”.
As a board member Musk agreed not to buy more than 14.9% of the company thus preventing a hostile takeover attempt.
Musk’s decision to reject the offer of a board seat now leaves the door open, if he so wishes, to take an even larger stake in the company. It’s possible that he could buy Twitter outright, quite comfortably, since he’s so wealthy.
For Twitter’s sake Musk was better off on the inside where he could do less damage. His deleted Tweet seems to indicate that he’d prefer to be on the outside creating mischief. It’s possible that his decision not to join the board has something to do with him allegedly breaking the law when buying up Twitter shares.
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