Topline
Elon Musk on Tuesday said he will resign as Twitter CEO as soon as he finds someone “foolish enough to take the job,” in a statement which comes more than a day after millions of users voted in favor of him stepping down in a Twitter poll he published.
Jared Kushner and Elon Musk look on during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Final match between … [+]
Key Facts
In a tweet, which was Musk’s first response to the results of Sunday’s poll, he added that he will move over to running the software and server teams at the company once a replacement is found.
The statement comes after 17.5 million users voted on Musk’s poll, with more than 57.5% of respondents calling on him to step down as CEO.
It was initially unclear if Musk would abide by the results after he and his followers insinuated without evidence that the results of his poll may have been manipulated by bots.
Earlier on Tuesday, CNBC reported that the billionaire was “actively looking” for a replacement and “lots of different names” were under consideration.
Tangent
Musk’s announcement gave a slight bump to Tesla’s shares in after-hours trading after another bad day at the market where they crashed by 8.05% and dropped below $140 a share. Tesla’s investors have expressed frustration about Musk’s work at Twitter, claiming that it was preventing him from fulfilling his role as Tesla’s CEO. Billionaire Leo Koguan, who claims to be the third largest Tesla investor in the world said last week that Musk had “abandoned Tesla” and urged the company’s board to look for a new CEO. Koguan later noted he would prefer if Musk handed off the Twitter CEO role to someone else so he could become a “full time” CEO for Tesla once again. Last month, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives warned that Musk’s controversial antics at Twitter were harming Tesla’s brand.
Forbes Valuation
According to our estimates, Musk’s net worth stands at $155.8 billion, more than a 50% drop from a peak of $320 billion in November 2021. The sharp decline has been driven by the poor performance of Tesla’s stock and has resulted in him ceding the world’s richest person title to Bernard Arnault, CEO of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH.
Key Background
Both Musk and Twitter have been embroiled in a series of controversies ever since he paid $44 billion to acquire the social media platform in late October. Musk who fashions himself as free speech absolutist initially signaled that Twitter would remain open to everyone, including his critics and he would hand off complex decisions about content moderation and policy decisions to an independent council. The billionaire, however, reneged on this promise last month and began assuming the role of the final arbiter of what Twitter should and should not allow. Musk unilaterally decided to restore several banned accounts on the platform—including former President Donald Trump’s personal account—after conducting unscientific polls on Twitter. Last week, Musk and Twitter faced intense backlash after he used an arbitrary rule change about tracking publicly available flight data to ban several high profile journalists—many of whom had been critical of him.
Further Reading
Musk Asked Twitter Users If He Should Step Down As CEO—Most Voters Said ‘Yes’ (Forbes)
Elon Musk ‘Actively Looking’ For Successor As Twitter CEO, Report Says (Forbes)
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2022/12/21/elon-musk-says-he-will-step-down-as-twitter-ceo-only-after-he-finds-a-successor/