Elon Musk to hold first meeting with Twitter staff since $44bn bid

theguardian.com:

Elon Musk will speak to Twitter employees this week for the first time since launching his $44bn (£36bn) bid in April, a source said on Monday, citing an email from Twitter chief executive, Parag Agrawal, to staff.

The meeting is scheduled for Thursday, and Musk will take questions directly from Twitter employees, the source added.

The news, first reported by Business Insider, comes after Twitter said last week that it anticipated a shareholder vote on the sale by early August.

A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that Musk would attend the company all-hands meeting this week.

Since Musk’s takeover bid, many Twitter employees have expressed concerns that the billionaire’s erratic behaviour could destabilise the social media company’s business and hurt it financially.

In April, Agrawal quelled employee anger at a company-wide meeting at which staff demanded answers to how managers planned to handle an anticipated mass exodus prompted by Musk.

Last week, Musk warned Twitter that he might walk away from his deal to acquire the company, if it failed to provide the data on spam and fake accounts that he seeks.

In a letter to Twitter’s chief legal officer, lawyers representing the Tesla chief executive said he believed the company was “actively resisting and thwarting” his rights to access data and information from the company under the agreement.

They said declining to present the information was a “material breach” of the deal agreement, which would allow Musk to walk away without paying the $1bn break fee written into the deal.