The headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco. Credit … Laura Morton for the New York Times
The Twitter board met on Wednesday, according to a person familiar with the situation, who was not authorized to speak publicly, hours after Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company.
Mr Musk refused a seat on the board over the weekend, leaving board members who had recently welcomed him into their ranks to weigh a proposal in which Mr Musk said he did not trust their management of the company.
The board consists of Twitter insiders, including Jack Dorsey, co-founder, and its chief executive, Parag Agraval, in addition to independent directors. They will be faced with deciding whether to accept or reject Mr Musk’s proposal.
Brett Taylor, CEO of business technology company Salesforce, chairs the board. Mr Musk sent a message to Mr Taylor on Wednesday night, announcing his intention to buy Twitter, according to a regulatory dossier. “After a few days of thinking about it, I decided I wanted to acquire the company and take it private,” Mr Musk wrote.
Salesforce considered buying Twitter in 2016, but the deal never materialized. Mr Taylor, who has been on Twitter since 2016, joined Salesforce a year later after acquiring his own company, Quip. Experience can give him a personal idea of how Twitter has judged previous acquisition attempts.
Another key player on the board is Egon Durban, co-chairman of Silver Lake, a private equity firm. Mr Durban joined Twitter on board in 2020 as part of a deal the company struck with another investor activist who wanted to shake Twitter’s management.
At the time, Silver Lake was investing in Twitter and helping to stabilize its management by preventing the immediate removal of Mr Dorsey. As Silver Lake has helped Twitter get out of a difficult situation in the past, Mr Durban may face questions about whether his company could double up and help repel Mr Musk.
Mr Dorsey may also influence the decision. He is friendly with Mr Musk and initially celebrated Mr Musk’s investment in the company and his decision to join the board. But Mr Dorsey has often delegated important decisions to his team, preferring to rely on their experience. And Mr Dorsey is also ready to leave the Twitter board next month, which could give him another reason to resign.
His allies on the board include Mr Agraval, who was named as his successor late last year, and Patrick Pichet, a general partner in venture capital firm Inovia Capital and a former chief financial officer at Google.
Mr Agraval and Mr Dorsey have been closely in agreement to make Twitter’s technology more decentralized, and Mr Pichet is a close confidant of Mr Dorsey in discussions on Twitter’s long-term plan. Mr Pichet may also have experience negotiating with Mr Musk – he was at Google in 2013 when he was considering buying Tesla.
Add Comment