Breaking: Elon Musk Makes Abrupt About-Face on Twitter Board of Directors; Here's What This Could Mean
Late Sunday night, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced the stunning news that billionaire Elon Musk has decided not to join the company’s board of directors.
Agrawal told employees that Musk had notified him of his decision on Saturday morning, which he noted was the day Musk’s appointment was to become officially effective.
“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. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input,” Agrawal wrote.
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
The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk did not reply to the newspaper’s request for comment late Sunday. But it reported he responded to Agrawal’s announcement by tweeting the “face with hand over mouth” emoji.
According to Axios, that tweet appears to have been deleted, along with others of Musk’s weekend tweets regarding changes at Twitter.
Although Agrawal told his “team” he believes it’s best that Musk has declined his seat on the board, this could turn out to be a disaster for the woke company. One of the conditions placed on board members is a 14.9 percent cap on their ownership of Twitter’s stock.
Now that Musk is free from that limitation, there is widespread speculation that he may pursue a hostile takeover of the social media giant.
As I mentioned in a weekend post, Musk didn’t become Twitter’s largest shareholder to sit on the sidelines.
He clearly intends to make his mark on this company. After it was reported Tuesday that Musk would be joining the company’s board, he amended his SEC filing to reflect that his interest in Twitter was no longer “passive” but “active.”
Perhaps I am wishcasting, but this scenario makes the most sense to me.
Anyway, the debate over this stunning reversal on social media has begun.
In response to Agrawal’s announcement, one Twitter user is “pretty sure” it’s because Musk is in trouble with the SEC. He posted a comment from uber liberal political strategist Robert Reich who pointed out that Musk’s ownership stake had reached the 5 percent threshold that would have required him to file a report with the SEC on March 14. Musk failed to disclose this information until April 4. In the meantime, the price of Twitter stock continued to rise “netting the world’s richest man $156 million,” Reich wrote.
Musk has run into trouble before with the SEC. In 2018, he was forced to pay the agency a fine of $20 million. Reich explained: “The agency put him under a consent decree after he allegedly misled investors for tweeting that he had enough funding to take Tesla private.”
I suppose this theory is possible, but to a billionaire like Musk, $20 million, or even $156 million, is chump change.
Pretty sure it’s because of this. He is in trouble. https://t.co/AQKTJcCNqJ
— Zelensky is a Mensch ???? (@Democracy_Saves) April 11, 2022
Another theory popping up on the internet is that the results of Musk’s mandatory background check may have been problematic.
Must be a serious reason. What were the results of the background check? That’s what you haven’t shared!
— Mathias Ssemanda (@MathiasSsemanda) April 11, 2022
A lot of people seem to have trouble parsing through corpo / legal / PR speak, so here’s a helpful guide to the only two parts of this statement that matter: pic.twitter.com/k2lV2jV5Sh
— Dr. Bhaskar Ⓥ (@xbhaskarx) April 11, 2022
I’m sticking with my original theory. The self-described “free-speech absolutist” has a plan. He has a golden opportunity to deal a blow to a company whose massive power has now, in many was, eclipsed that of the U.S. government.
Yes, a hostile takeover of Twitter is a bold move. But can you think of an individual better equipped to make it happen than Elon Musk?
Let the games begin.
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