The board of Twitter has on Monday accepted Elon Musk’s bid to take over the company.
This gives Musk, the world’s richest man, control over the microbloging app network.
After buying a stake of 9.2 percent in March, Musk had in early April offered to acquire the company at 54.20 per share for $43 billion. The offer which was announced on his Twitter handle gained momentum with fans and followers around the world discussing the impact of the acquisition on the future of the company. While there were many who said it was a welcomed move, Twitter executives did not seem amenable to giving up the company to the world’s richest person.
Musk said the goal for buying the company is to tackle trolls on Twitter and also proposed changes to the Twitter Blue premium subscription service, including slashing its price and banning advertising.
He also believes that Twitter needs to be taken private to grow and become a genuine platform for free speech. This is not the first time he is proposing to take one of his companies private. The CEO had met a brick wall from investors when he attempted to take Tesla private after the company was already listed.
Meanwhile, investors reacted positively to the news of the acquisition as the shares of the microblogging platform rose by 4.5 percent in pre-market trading in New York at $51.15. The company’s shares had fallen about 10 percent since Parag Agrawal took over as CEO from founder Jack Dorsey in late November.
