Elon Musk's ally, Silver Lake CEO Egon Durban, is no longer on Twitter's board of directors.
On Wednesday, Twitter shareholders decided not to vote for Durban's re-election to the board. The vote took place at the company's annual meeting.
Musk has maintained a professional relationship with Durban.
Twitter Board Members
Twitter's board had a major shakeup recently. Egon Durban, a longtime friend of Elon Musk, has been voted off the company's board of directors.
After not being re-elected, Durban turned in his resignation, which is being looked at by Twitter's board right now.
As reported by Business Insider, a representative for Twitter said in a statement that the company's board of directors' nominating and corporate governance committees "will promptly consider whether to recommend that the board accept Mr. Durban's resignation and provide an update in due course."
It is an unusual occurrence for shareholders to vote to oust directors from their positions on company boards.
Based on the results of yesterday's vote, it appears that investors in Twitter are concerned about the manner in which Musk is handling his proposal to purchase the company for $44 billion.
Musk's journey in acquiring Twitter started in the first week of April when he made the 9.2% Twitter holdings public. Twitter offered Musk a seat on the board, which he accepted at first but then turned down so he could try to buy the company.
According to Twitter's regulatory filing, it was Durban who made the connection between Musk and Agrawal and two other Twitter directors in order to discuss the possibility of giving Musk a board seat after the billionaire purchased a 9% stake in the company.
It is also reported that, when Elon Musk was asked to take a seat on Twitter's board prior to his $44 billion acquisition, Durban was the second person Musk spoke about the matter with after talking to Jack Dorsey.
Durban and Musk have gotten to know each other because of SolarCity.
In 2015, Silver Lake, Durban's company, made an investment in the solar energy company SolarCity, which had Musk serving on its board of directors and was established by Musk's cousins. Later on, SolarCity was subsequently acquired by Tesla.
In addition to that, both Durban and Musk are on the board of directors of Endeavor, a sports and entertainment company.
Aside from the exit of Egon Durban, Twitter's co-founder and long-running CEO, Jack Dorsey, is now officially off of the company's board of directors.
This news comes as no surprise as Dorsey, prior to his resignation last year, had stated that he would continue to serve as a member of the Board of Directors until his term expires.
The co-founder refused to conduct voting for his re-election.
Elon Musk's Twitter Acquisition
The Twitter board of directors' shakeup is assumed to be attributed to the ongoing deal of Elon Musk's acquisition of the company. Just recently, Musk has been putting Twitter executives in hot spots by firing up some sort of damaging tweets about the company.
An example of this is Musk's complaint against the company's unfair counting of its bots. As previously reported in iTech Post, during Twitter's filing, the company calculated that it has an estimate of 5% bots or spam accounts on its platform.
However, Musk disagrees and believes otherwise. The Tesla CEO thinks that there are at least 20 fake or spam accounts on the platform. Musk tweeted a demand for transparency on the number of bots before proceeding with its $44 billion deal with the company.
20% fake/spam accounts, while 4 times what Twitter claims, could be *much* higher.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022
My offer was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate.
Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%.
This deal cannot move forward until he does.
