Elon Musk Says Twitter Is Taking Up Almost All His Time | Tech News

Elon Musk Says Twitter Is Taking Up Almost All His Time

Elon Musk told a judge he is spending almost all his time now reorganizing Twitter Inc. rather than on the other companies he oversees.

By:BLOOMBERG
| Updated on: Nov 17 2022, 20:54 IST
Elon Musk Twitter Bankruptcy Talk: Timeline
Elon Musk
1/13 He’s told employees to brace themselves for long hours, that “the road ahead is arduous and will require intense work to succeed,” and said bankruptcy was possible. Here’s how the saga is unfolding: (Bloomberg)
Elon Musk
2/13 Oct. 27: Musk takes control- His first act is to fire the Board along with CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, head of legal Vijaya Gadde and Counsel Sean Edgett. Musk forms advisory team that includes celebrity attorney Alex Spiro, VC David Sacks, Neuralink CEO and head of Musk’s family office Jared Birchall, investor Jason Calacanis, and partner of Andreessen Horowitz Sriram Krishnan. (Reuters)
Elon Musk
3/13 Oct. 28: Brands begin to take pause- As Musk plans to unban accounts and says he will charge for user verification, advertisers suspend ads. (AFP)
Elon Musk
4/13 Oct. 31: Top tweeters protest- Amid murmurings of plans to charge existing verified accounts, author Steven King tweets, “$20 a month to keep my blue check? F**k that, they should pay me. If that gets instituted, I’m gone like Enron.” (AFP)
Elon Musk
5/13 Nov. 1: Teams working around the clock- The product team works over the weekend on Musk’s idea to charge users for blue check marks. A photo of product director Esther Crawford sleeping on the floor of a conference room, trying to make the deadline, goes viral. Meanwhile, managers are asked to make lists of who can be fired. Employees print out their software code for review by Musk and engineers from Tesla, to determine if their contributions are worthy of keeping a job. (REUTERS)
Elon Musk
6/13 Nov. 3: Massive layoffs begin- A memo is sent to all employees telling them of imminent layoffs and to watch for an email with the subject line: “Your Role at Twitter.” Badge access to offices is suspended as 3,700 staffers receive word that they’ve been cut. Realizing employees essential for the continuity of the business have been let go by mistake, some are asked to come back. (AP)
Elon Musk
7/13 Co-founder EV Williams tweets, “Heart’s out to the tweeps getting laid off today.” Co-founder Jack Dorsey adds, “I realize many are angry with me. I own the responsibility for why everyone is in this situation: I grew the company size too quickly. I apologize for that.” (REUTERS)
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8/13 Nov. 5-6: Musk responds to celebrity protests- Unrest grows on the platform over the weekend, particularly over the issue of impersonator accounts. Actress Valerie Bertinelli starts a movement of people changing their Twitter names to “Elon Musk.” Comedian Kathy Griffin joins the protest, finds her account locked. Then Musk announces, “Going forward, any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying `parody’ will be permanently suspended.” (AP)
Elon Musk
9/13 Nov. 8: Musk sells more Tesla- Despite a previous vow not to sell any more Tesla stock, Musk sells an additional $3.95 billion, bringing the total sold in past year to $36 billion. (REUTERS)
Elon Musk
10/13 Nov. 9: Musk Blue tick mark- Blue check mark option becomes available for purchase, and immediately becomes a tool for impersonators. An account masquerading as Nintendo Inc. posts an image of Super Mario holding up a middle finger. (REUTERS)
Elon Musk
11/13 Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, and a close cadre of advisers are considering a host of changes to the way Twitter is run and makes money. (REUTERS)
Elon Musk
12/13 Nov. 10: More key executives quit as Musk warns of bankruptcy- In his first meeting with employees, Musk tells them to brace for 80-hour weeks and requires everyone back in the office full time. He also says bankruptcy for the company is not out of the question if it doesn’t start generating more cash. Several executives in charge of keeping Twitter safe and accountable to its users quit, including chief information security officer Lea Kissner, chief privacy officer Damien Kieran and chief compliance Marianne Fogarty.. (AFP)
Elon Musk
13/13 Nov. 11: Verified accounts get “Official” tags- Twitter adds badges that say “offiical” to verified accounts in some places, though confusion abounds. More brands depart the platform. (REUTERS)
Elon Musk
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In addition to Tesla and Twitter, Musk also runs SpaceX, The Boring Co., and is involved in OpenAI and Neuralink. (Reuters)

Elon Musk, whose $55 billion Tesla Inc. pay deal is being challenged in court as too excessive for a part-time chief executive officer, told a judge he is spending almost all his time now reorganizing Twitter Inc. rather than on the other companies he oversees.

Since acquiring Twitter for $44 billion in October, Musk testified Wednesday in Delaware that the lion's share of his time “for the past few weeks” has been at the social-media platform, though he said the “fundamental organizational restructuring” will be completed by the end of next week.

Delaware Chancery Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick is hearing evidence in a trial to determine whether Musk, the world's richest person, should be forced to return stock-options awarded under the pay package to Tesla, the electric-car maker.

Richard Tornetta -- who owns nine shares of Tesla -- claims in his lawsuit that the board failed to exercise independence from Musk as it drew up a new pay package for the chief executive officer in 2018. Tornetta said the board lavished the world's largest compensation plan on a part-time leader. 

In addition to Tesla and Twitter, Musk also runs Space Exploration Technologies Corp., an aeronautical start-up; and The Boring Co., a tunneling business; and is involved in OpenAI and Neuralink. Musk agreed with Tornetta's lawyer that at the time of his pay deal, he was spending about 54% of his time at Tesla, 36% at SpaceX, 10% on Open AI, Boring and Neuralink.

‘Silly' Question

However, Musk said questions about the split between the companies were “silly” because he is focused on taking “a set of actions that are good for” humanity, whether that's making electric vehicles, using technology to help people with paralysis, or setting up a colony on Mars.

The billionaire has said it would take 1 million tons of cargo to build a self-sustaining city on the planet at a cost of as much as $10 trillion. Evidence in the Tesla compensation case shows Musk vowed to use money generated by the 2018 pay plan to fund his dream of a Martian colony.

Tesla directors have defended the pay agreement as not being marred by conflicts. They claim they weren't influenced by their ties to Musk and said the payout motivated the mercurial billionaire to bring his A-game to spur Tesla's spectacular growth. The company's market valuation has jumped from $50 billion to more than $560 billion over the last four years.

Antonio Gracias, a former Tesla director and long-time friend of Musk, testified Wednesday he acted independently in reviewing the 2018 pay plan even though he'd vacationed with the entrepreneur over the years. Gracias said he had a solid relationship with Musk that allowed him to openly share his thoughts on business issues.

“I can say whatever I want” to Musk, Gracias told McCormick after the CEO had finished testifying. “I don't pull punches with him.” Other evidence presented in the case showed Musk also vacationed with Tesla director James Murdoch, the son of media baron Rupert Murdoch.

According to Gracias, Musk was never required by his compensation plan to spend a certain amount of time at Tesla. “He's not billing by the hour,” Gracias said. “ That's not how this works.”

James Murdoch, in testimony Wednesday, joined other board members in praising Musk's pay package as appropriate because it only kicked in if Tesla hit targets for market value and production that were designed to be difficult to achieve.

Across corporate American, “you see a lot of payment for failure” in executive compensation, Murdoch said. Musk benefitted only after Tesla investors “got much, much more” from the surge in Tesla shares, he said.

No Role

During his three hours on the witness stand, Musk claimed he had no role in approving the pay deal, and at the time was focused instead on solving the complex problem of creating a sustainable electric-vehicle company.

“I do not have any understanding of the internal processes by which this compensation structure was obtained,” Musk said, adding that he never discussed his compensation with board members or dictate the terms of the deal. 

However, court filings in the case show the entrepreneur was asked in a text by his friend Ira Ehrenpreis, a Tesla board member, on April 8, 2017, about how to structure his future compensation. Musk replied that he should end up “owning 10 percent of the company” in a performance plan built around a progression of targets that would each grant him 1% of Tesla's outstanding shares, filings show. 

As Musk later mused to one of his co-founders in an email, he was “planning on something really crazy, but also high risk.”

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First Published Date: 17 Nov, 20:43 IST
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