Musk recently completed a $44B acquisition, firing CEO Parag Agrawal and others.

Elon Musk closed the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter today, ending a months-long saga that led Twitter to sue Musk to force him to honor their merger agreement. One of the first things Musk did was fire executives.

"Musk fired Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal and Chief Financial Officer Ned Siegel on Thursday after the deal closed," the Wall Street Journal wrote. According to reports, Twitter's legal chief Vijaya Gadde and general counsel Sean Edgett were also fired by Musk. It's unclear who will be CEO under Musk.

Musk had a falling out with Agrawal when he tried to walk out of the merger contract. In August, he challenged the then-Twitter CEO to a public debate over Twitter's spam account data. Twitter insisted on filing a lawsuit against Musk, and the court case helped force Musk to close the deal. Musk also tweeted criticism of Gard's approach to content moderation.

The deal came a day after Musk visited Twitter's San Francisco headquarters. The Washington Post reported that “Musk told potential investors in a deal to buy the company that he planned to lay off nearly 75% of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, reducing the company to a skeleton staff of just over 2,000.” Told employees during the Twitter interview that he would not fire 75% of the workforce.

Now that Musk has finalized the deal, Twitter will become a private company. He has said he bought Twitter to protect free speech, but his definition of free speech suggests he is willing to restrict speech in any country where the government asks him to.

Hours before closing the acquisition, Musk posted a message to advertisers, assuring them that Twitter would not "become a free hellscape."

Merger ends months of fighting

The deal was completed a day before a court-imposed deadline. The saga began when Musk bought a 9.2% stake in Twitter in March. Twitter then struck a deal with Musk that allowed him to join the board while barring him from buying more than 14.9% of the company's stock.

There are signs that Musk backed out of the deal and began laying the groundwork for an outright acquisition of the company. He offered to buy Twitter in mid-April, saying he wanted to preserve free speech on the platform.

Twitter’s directors quickly took the poison pill, making it difficult for anyone to buy more than 15% of the company’s stock in any “non-board-approved transaction.” Musk continued to try to make acquisitions, and on April 25 signed an agreement with Twitter's board to buy the company for $44 billion.

Musk's second thought quickly surfaced. On May 13, Musk said the Twitter purchase was "on hold" while he awaited details on the number of spam and fake accounts on the site. Twitter's board insisted it would "execute the merger agreement."

In the weeks that followed, Musk claimed that Twitter was falsely claiming that less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users (mDAU) were spam or fake users. He never refuted mDAU's statistics, but attempted to terminate the merger agreement on July 8, claiming that Twitter "made the false and misleading statements that Mr. Musk relied upon in entering into the merger agreement."

Musk's chances of winning in court are slim

A few days later, Twitter sued Musk in Delaware Chancery Court. Musk tried to block the trial until at least February 2023, but Judge Kathaleen McCormick granted Twitter's motion to expedite the case and scheduled it for October. "The reality is that delays can cause irreparable harm to sellers," McCormick said in delivering his ruling.

Musk suffered more setbacks in court as the discovery of the case began. At one point, McCormick slammed Musk for failing to provide the text messages requested by Twitter, citing "clear flaws" in the production of the document on Musk's part.

Musk's own discovery request apparently did not provide enough evidence to support his case. As law professor Robert Mueller told Ars, Musk "almost certainly will lose" the case. In early October, he again offered to buy Twitter for the originally agreed upon price.

Twitter wanted to keep the trial on the court's schedule, while Musk criticized the company for not immediately dropping the lawsuit against him and asked the judge to move forward with the case. "Twitter won't take an affirmative answer," Musk claimed. McCormick granted Musk's request for a stay on Oct. 6, but set an Oct. 28 deadline to complete the merger.

U.S. agencies question Musk's disclosures

With all the previously described drama unfolding, the SEC began investigating Musk's recent disclosure that he owns a 9.2% stake in Twitter. The FTC reportedly opened an investigation into whether Musk failed to comply with antitrust reporting requirements related to the stake.

The SEC also questioned Musk's claim in a May 17 tweet that "the deal couldn't go forward" until Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal justified the company's estimate of spam accounts. The SEC told Musk that "the word 'cannot' indicates that Mr. Musk and his affiliates are exercising their legal right to suspend the acquisition under the merger agreement, but that Musk did not amend the document" to reflect the apparent material change. "

As Twitter told McCormick in an Oct. 6 court filing, "Elon Musk is currently under investigation by federal authorities for his conduct in connection with the acquisition of Twitter."

If the deal doesn't close by this Friday, Musk and Twitter will be asked to contact McCormick for a November trial date. Instead, Musk will run Twitter as October ends and November begins.