Musk was reportedly appointed to the Twitter board on Saturday, but the world’s richest man told the company the day he would not actually take the board seat.
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On Wednesday, Twitter shareholders voted to remove Egon Durban, co-CEO and CEO of private equity firm Silver Lake, from its board of directors as the company navigates difficult negotiations with potential buyer Elon Musk.
The Durban firm has worked with Musk in the past. He did not receive enough votes from Twitter investors to be re-elected to the company’s board, according to a vote on the company’s shareholders’ meeting.
The count comes after Musk agreed to buy Twitter on a $ 44 billion deal. The news of the acquisition sparked shock waves through Twitter’s investor base and its staff. But with Twitter shares falling short of the rest of the market, Musk has since expressed deep reluctance to the deal, saying the company has not been truthful or transparent about the prevalence of network bots.
Tesla shares have plummeted since Musk’s bid on Twitter amid concerns that the billionaire CEO, who already has a large additional workload as CEO of SpaceX, is further distracted.
In a statement to CNBC, a Twitter spokesman confirmed the shareholders’ vote.
“In accordance with the company’s corporate governance guidelines, Egon Durban has submitted his resignation to the Board, with the effectiveness of this resignation conditional on the acceptance of this resignation by the Board,” said the spokesperson in an email. “The Board’s Nominations and Corporate Governance Committee will promptly consider whether to recommend that the Board accept Mr. Durban’s resignation and provide an update in due course.”
Twitter said it will have more details in an SEC document it plans to post Wednesday night.
Durban, through Silver Lake, is a business partner and sponsor of Musk Companies. A clean energy division of its investment firm invested $ 100 million in Musk’s solar business, SolarCity, before it was acquired by Tesla, which runs Musk. And when Musk announced in 2018 that he was going to take Tesla privately, he said he was working with Silver Lake as a financial advisor. That deal never happened.
The two men are currently on the board of the entertainment conglomerate Endeavor, which is headed by Ari Emanuel.
Silver Lake did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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