Even as Elon Musk moves to beef up his offer to buy Twitter, the question of who will head the microblogging site continues to swirl. Reports on Thursday indicated the maverick businessman himself could be in the hot seat.
Reuters reported Musk is “expected to become Twitter's temporary CEO after closing his $44 billion takeover of the social-media firm”. CNBC, which was the first outlet to report on the possibility of Musk serving as temporary CEO, said he could remain in the post for a “few months”.
Musk is already the CEO of Tesla and also heads The Boring Company and SpaceX. Reuters reported “Tesla shares dropped over 8% on Thursday, as investors fretted that Musk's involvement with Twitter could distract him from running the world's most valuable electric-car maker. Twitter shares, on the other hand, extended gains and were up about 4% at $50.89, closer to the deal price of $54.20, as investors bet that the new funding made the completion of the deal more likely.”
On Thursday, Musk listed a group of high-profile investors who were committed to providing over $7 billion for the Twitter bid. “Commitments range from $1 billion from Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to $5 million from Honeycomb Asset Management, which invested in SpaceX,” CNBC reported.
Musk had recently led presentations on Twitter to investors. “Musk told investors that he felt Twitter’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization margin was too low and the company has 'too many engineers not doing enough',” CNBC reported.
