Skip to main content

The most expensive dismissal.

 Elon Musk became Twitter’s owner late Thursday as his $44 billion deal to take over the company officially closed, marking a new era for one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. As one of his first moves, he fired several longtime top Twitter executives, according to three people familiar with the matter who spoke anonymously to discuss sensitive issues. One of the people said that Sean Edgett, the company’s general counsel, was also pushed out. The top executives were hastily escorted out of the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

Musk’s late Thursday moves to signal his intentions to put his stamp on Twitter firmly. Musk has publicly criticized the company’s outgoing management over product decisions and content moderation, as well as saying he would restore former president Donald Trump’s account. Still, «Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!» Musk tweeted Thursday in a post offering assurances to advertisers. He showed up at the company’s offices unexpectedly Wednesday, carrying a sink to suggest that the message that he would become owner needed to «sink in,» according to a photo he posted to his more than 100 million Twitter followers.

Musk has suggested that he wants to loosen standards for policing harmful content such as misinformation and hate speech. Some right-wing influencers celebrated Musk’s ownership on Thursday night and have seen their follower counts balloon since he announced his takeover. Musk has repeatedly criticized the company and supported online attacks against individual executives. Musk represents a different kind of owner than Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey or his now-rival Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook. They generally try to stay politically neutral.

Musk has often styled himself as a moderate throughout his Twitter bid, but he also announced that he would vote Republican in the 2022 midterms. He was leaning toward voting for Republican Florida Gov. Those hopes were quickly dashed with the firings of longtime top executives who had commanded the trust of existing staff. But his relationship with top executives rapidly went south. Agrawal took exception to Musk’s April 9 tweet that asked, «Is Twitter dying?» according to text message exchanges revealed in court documents.

Musk laid out his plan in subsequent messages. Roughly two weeks later, Musk and Twitter struck a deal. Then, in an onstage interview, Musk discussed his plans. Twitter executives were predicting internally that the company would be far off track from revenue targets in 2022, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe proceedings.

Twitter’s board was planning to make «drastic» cuts to staff and other services, including cutting roughly a quarter of the budget for third-party contractors who moderate content for the company, significant amounts to infrastructure and data centres, and firing thousands of people to shave at least $700 million off labour costs, according to the interviews and documents.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Cloud Bookkeeping

HS2 cost cuts new routes and add delays.

 Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have begun work on «Project Sil­ver­light» sug­gest­ing the high­speed rail scheme might face four addi­tional years of delay. The planned High Speed 2 rail line faces fur­ther delays of up to four years and more cuts to the project under plans being drawn up by min­is­ters to rein in its bal­loon­ing costs. The extra delays to the coun­try’s biggest infra­struc­ture project would mean that it would not be com­pleted until as late as 2045 — 12 years after ori­gin­ally planned. «This is a func­tion of infla­tion; we are hav­ing to find huge sav­ings because the cost of everything the depart­ment is already doing will have become so much more expens­ive by then,» said one gov­ern­ment offi­cial. In Octo­ber, the FT repor­ted that the Treas­ury had asked HS2’s man­age­ment team to identify poten­tial cuts or «scope reduc­tions» to the high-speed line. Trans­port depart­ment offi­cials have sub­sequently begun work on Project Sil­ver­light aimed at fi...
4 comments
Read more

Doubt on CS's collateral.

  Credit Suisse provided an emergency $140mn loan to Greensill Capital based partly on invoices to companies that deny ever doing the business stated on the documents. The Swiss bank provided the loan in October 2020, less than five months before the collapse of Greensill, a supply chain finance firm that counted former British prime minister David Cameron as a senior adviser. Invoices issued by metals magnate Sanjeev Gupta’s Liberty Commodities and sold to Greensill formed part of the collateral for the loan, according to documents seen by the Financial Times and people familiar with the transaction. Yet several of the parties named on the invoices have told the FT they did no business with Liberty. GFG has consistently denied any wrongdoing. Credit Suisse’s loan had a clause dictating that the collateral value had to be equal to or greater than the $140mn borrowed. The terms of the debt agreement only allowed invoices on Green-sill’s balance sheet to count towards this tally if t...
2 comments
Read more

Tax cut

  Sterling tumbled against the dollar to below $1 . 09 ,  hitting its lowest point since 1985 ,  after UK chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled a £45bn debt-financed tax-cutting package that sparked a historic increase in borrowing costs .  Kwarteng’s political and economic gamble includes the biggest set of tax cuts for 50 years ,  with the end of the 45p additional rate for the highest earners as well as a sharp reduction in levies on dividends .  But concern over the amount of debt required to finance the tax cuts triggered a frenetic day of trading that raised doubts on whether Britain’s new economic approach was sustainable .  «Britain will be remembered for having pursued the worst macroeconomic policies of any major country in a long time» . Kwarteng has staked the political fortunes of the Conservative party on the bet that the radical tax cuts and deregulation will raise Britain’s sluggish growth rate to 2 . 5 per cent .  «This is a new appr...
Post a Comment
Read more