Elon Musk To Meet With Twitter Staff

Elon Musk is to speak with Twitter employees in a virtual meeting on Thursday, his first direct interaction with Twitter staff since launching his $44 billion (£36.2bn) bid for the company in April.

Musk is expected to take questions from Twitter employees at the all-hands meeting on Thursday morning.

Chief executive Parag Agrawal announced the event in an email to staff on Monday, telling staff they could submit questions for Musk in advance of the meeting.

Twitter confirmed the news, which was first reported by Business Insider.

Turmoil

Since the deal was accepted in April Musk has been openly critical of the company, its products and policies, while Agrawal has made executive changes and introduced a series of cost-cutting measures.

Musk has threatened to walk away from the deal over questions about the social media company’s user base, and how much of it is composed of fake accounts.

In a letter to the company last week he said failure to provide information on fake accounts would amount to a “material breach” of the terms of the deal, meaning he could abandon it.

Last month Musk placed the deal on hold over his concerns about bots.

Following the letter Twitter said it would supply Musk with the internal data it uses to estimate the proportion of fake accounts on the service.

Stock market gloom

Some industry watchers have said Musk may be using the concerns to renegotiate the terms of the deal or call it off.

His questions about the deal have coincided with a general plunge in tech shares, including those of Tesla, which Musk is heavily relying on to finance the deal.

Twitter’s shares have fallen far below Musk’s offer price of $54.20, indicating investors may not be expecting the buyout to go through.

At the end of trading on Monday they stood at $37.03.