By Sarah Al Arab | Staff Writer
Two weeks earlier Elon Musk disclosed that he will become Twitter’s largest shareholder amassing 9.2% of its stake. A day later, Twitter announced that Musk will be added to its board of directors, and the latter delightfully welcomed the idea by his tweet “Looking forward to working with Parag and Twitter board to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months”. However, on Sunday’s night Musk abruptly declined Twitter’s offer to join the board. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has not identified explicit reasons for this outcome nor did Twitter that sufficed by its CEO Parag Agrawal’s tweet “I believe this is for the best”.
Being a member of Twitter’s directors means that you are restricted to the laws, freedom of speech, and flexibility the company imposes. Nevertheless, Musk is popular for his rugged straight opinions that would never get along with Twitter’s restrictions. Musk distinctly was aiming to take over Twitter as he has elucidated that Twitter has the potential of being a platform for the freedom of speech, and free speech is vital for a functioning democracy. Moreover, Musk has hinted to substantial changes he would like to induce to Twitter such as changing to a Blue premium subscription service that was launched in Australia and Canada a year ago, involving prohibiting advertisements and allowing users to pay their subscriptions in cryptocurrency. From a close view, you can tell that Musk’s commitment for making Twitter an environment that promotes free speech is bizarre, and his primary objective is to increase profitability.
If it has happened for Musk to be on Twitter’s board, he would have to abide by the code of misconduct that applies to Twitter’s employees and users. In addition to that, Musk would have been limited to being able to only increase his ownership stake to a maximum of 14.9% according to the agreement set. As a result of his rejection, Musk now is not bounded to any form of free speech restraints, and he can buy Twitter out straight. In accordance, and without a second thought Musk rushed to make an offer on Thursday of $54.2 a share, valuing the firm at $43 billion. Correspondingly, Twitter’s CEO proclaimed that the company was not “held hostage” by the offer.
Interesting