Elon Musk now officially owns Twitter; Parag Agrawal, Vijaya Gadde out

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who was locked in a court battle with Twitter, has finally taken control of the microblogging social media platform and reportedly fired its top executives, including CEO Parag Agrawal. The mega-billionaire on Thursday completed his $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter, a day ahead of the deadline, and terminated chief executive Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde, as per U.S. media reports. However, there is no official confirmation by the company regarding the same.

The takeover of Twitter by the world's richest person concluded after months-long legal battle, which saw many flip-flops by Musk, forcing Twitter to move court against him. He accused Twitter of having a weak leadership and targeted it on many occasions for its inability to reveal the actual number of bot or spam accounts operating on the platform.

The CEO of Tesla and SpaceX had first proposed to buy out Twitter in April. Musk later tried to back out of the deal, citing Twitter's inability to provide data on spam or fake accounts on its platform. However, Twitter sued him in the U.S. Delaware Court of Chancery, accusing him of"knowingly" breaching the $44-billion deal. After a lot of backtracking, Musk said he would buy Twitter at the agreed $54.20 per share price if debt financing could be secured. 

To fulfill his obligation, the Tesla CEO has pledged to provide $46.5billion in equity and debt financing. For this, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Corp, amongst other banks, have committed to providing $13 billion as debt financing to him. Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle Corp, and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal have also assured $7.1 billion. 

Musk, who is the third most followed person (110.4 million) on the microblogging platform after former U.S. president Barack Obama and singer Justin Bieber, plans to cut the microblogging platform’s workforce by about75%. Twitter's current employee strength stands at 7,500, if Musk goes forward with his highly controversial plan, it could reduce the total workforce to about 2,000.

The big churning at the microblogging company is inevitable as even before the deal with Musk was announced, the company had planned to initiate some cost-saving plans, which were then put on hold in light of the takeover agreement with Musk. The company is reportedly eying to reduce its overall cost and employee payroll by about $800 million by 2023. 

Meanwhile, shares of Twitter closed Thursday’s trade at $53.7 apiece, up 0.66% on the New York Stock Exchange.