'Bird is freed': Musk takes over Twitter, fires CEO Parag Agrawal

“The bird is freed,” Musk had tweeted on Friday after completing the takeover of Twitter and firing the social media giant’s four top executives, including Agrawal, legal executive Vijaya Gadde, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and General Counsel Sean Edgett.

Three of the top executives who were said to be fired are poised to collect more than $100 million in severance and payouts of previously granted equity awards. 

Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, who stepped into the role less than a year ago, is eligible to receive roughly $50 million, according to calculations by Bloomberg News. Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal, policy and trust, are in line for about $37 million and $17 million each, respectively.

Musk, a self-styled “free speech absolutist”, has been critical of Twitter's management and its moderation policies. “At least one of the executives who was fired was escorted out of Twitter’s office,” a report in the New York Times said.
 

The deal’s closing removes a cloud of uncertainty that has hung over Twitter’s business, employees and shareholders for much of the year, CNN commented.

After initially agreeing to buy the company in April, Musk spent months attempting to get out of the deal, first citing concerns about the number of bots on the platform and later allegations raised by a company whistleblower.
 

Agrawal, 38, was appointed Twitter CEO in November last year after the social media site’s co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down.

Musk, 51, intends to replace Parag Agrawal, who was fired along with three other top executives, a person familiar with the matter said, asking not to be identified discussing internal deliberations.

Musk also intends to do away with permanent bans on users because he doesn’t believe in lifelong prohibitions, the person said. That means people previously booted off the platform may be allowed to return, a category that would include former president Donald Trump, the person said. It’s unclear however if Trump would be allowed back on Twitter in the near term.

The top executives of Twitter fired by new owner Elon Musk stand to receive separation payouts totaling some $122 million, research firm Equilar said.

In an email to Reuters, Equilar, known for its research on executive compensation, valued Agrawal’s so-called “golden parachute” at $57.4 million, while Segal’s was $44.5 million and Gadde’s was $20 million. 

Payouts would include 100 per cent  of an executive’s annual base salary, healthcare premiums, and accelerated vesting of equity awards, the filing states.

Takeover Timeline

April 4  Musk discloses over 9% stake in Twitter; firm’s shares rise 31%

April 5 Twitter says Musk will join company's board 

April 10 World's richest person says he will not join Twitter board 

April 14 Offers $54.20/share, a 38% premium to Twitter’s April 1 closing price 

April 15 Twitter adopts poison pill to protect company from takeover 

May 26  Musk sued by Twitter investors for stock ‘manipulation’ during takeover bid 

June 6 Billionaire threatens to walk away from the deal if Twitter fails to provide data on bot accounts 

July 8 Says he is terminating the deal as Twitter breached provisions of the merger agreement

July 12 Twitter sues Musk for violating $44-bn deal

July 29  Musk confidentially countersues Twitter

August 23  A whistleblower complaint by former Twitter head of security Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko becomes public. It alleges the company misled regulators and investors about security and data privacy 

September 7 Delaware judge allows Musk to add whistleblower claims to his countersuit against 

October 4 Musk proposes to go ahead with his original offer of $54.20 per share to take Twitter private

October 6 Judge halts Twitter lawsuit vs Musk until Oct. 28 to permit deal closing 

October 25 Musk informs co-investors he plans to close Twitter deal by Oct. 28, according to a source 

October 27 Musk begins his Twitter ownership with firings, declares the ‘bird is freed'

Who is Parag Agrawal?

An IIT Bombay and Stanford alumnus, Agrawal joined Twitter in 2011. Rising in the company, he became Twitter’s chief technology officer in 2017. Considered a protege of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, Agrawal was appointed CEO of Twitter after Dorsey stepped down. Agrawal “worked on some of Twitter's complicated technical challenges and built relationships with his engineering peers” 

and Dorsey.He shared Dorsey’s “vision that Twitter’s future hinged on overhauling its technology so it could rely more on machine learning and decentralize its services to give users more control over their experiences on the platform.”