‘Chief Twit’ Elon Musk becomes the SOLE director of Twitter after dissolving the board of directors

Elon Musk has dissolved Twitter’s board of directors which makes him the ‘sole director’ of the social media giant – as he plans to ‘fire a quarter of the workforce.

A securities filing lodged on Monday states that all previous members of the board are no longer directors ‘in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement’.

The Tesla CEO, who has given himself the title of ‘Chief Twit’, fired four executives shortly after taking over, who had been owed millions under the merger agreement.

Former CEO Parag Agrawal had been set to received up to $60million alone, but Musk sacked them all ‘for cause’ – though it is unclear his reasons behind the move. 

It is possible the firings could void the payout agreement, but the executives are ‘deliberating’ their next steps. 

Agrawal and chairman Bret Taylor are no longer on the board of directors after Musk’s $44bn takeover. 

Martha Lane Fox, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou have also been ousted from their positions after the SpaceX chief’s overhaul.

As well as sacking Agrawal, Musk also fired  CFO Ned Segal, Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde and General Counsel Sean Edgett. 

It comes as the new Twitter CEO allegedly issued an ultimatum to the social media platform’s engineers, telling them to revamp Twitter’s verification system in less than a fortnight or face the sack.

Celebrity lawyer Alex Spiro, a long-time Musk legal representative, led the conversations about the job cuts, according to the Washington Post.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief immediately fired the social media company’s CEO, chief financial officer, head of legal, and general counsel when he assumed command on Thursday.

The first round of layoffs will impact almost every department, and are expected to specifically impact sales, product, engineering, legal, and trust and safety in the coming days, the Post’s source claimed.

Twitter had over 7,000 employees at the end of 2021, according to a regulatory filing and a quarter of the headcount amounts to nearly 2,000 employees.

Musk denied a New York Times report about laying off Twitter employees at a date earlier than November 1 – which is tomorrow – to avoid stock grants due on the day.

After engineers, Twitter’s highest paid employees work in sales – with several earning more than $300,000.

Musk also denied claims that he will be firing employees before they received their November 1 compensation in the form of stock grants.

He responded to the claims made by ProPublica’s deputy managing editor, Eric Umansky, responding by saying ‘this is false.’

According to a report from The Verge, Musk wants to launch a pay-for-play verification system in which verified users are charged $20 per month.

The problem is that engineers have until November 7 to launch the scheme or face being fired. Employees were only told of the project on October 30.

The Verge report says that the price of the verification is subject to change. The price will also cover so-far unspecified other features.

Since Musk first offered to buy Twitter, the world’s wealthiest man has made it clear he planned to shake things up at the social media giant.

Hours before The Verge report emerged, Musk tweeted: ‘The whole verification process is being revamped right now.’

Earlier, tech website Platformer’s Casey Newton reported that Twitter was leaning towards asking for verified users to pay for the privilege.

DailyMail.com has asked Twitter for comment on this story.

Both David Sacks and Jason Calacanis have appeared in a company directory over the weekend, and are understood to have the titles of ‘staff software engineer’.

Musk’s official title is CEO, although publicly he has referred to himself as ‘Chief Twit’.

On Sunday Musk took aim at Twitter’s board ad lawyers, claiming that they ‘deliberately hid evidence from the court’ – referring to his legal bid to stop the takeover.

Sriram Krishnan, another longtime Musk associate, also tweeted that he was helping out the deal by investing $400million from crypto firm Andreessen Horowitz.

Musk took further aim at the New York Post in tweeting a screenshot of a headline from NYTimes.com accusing him of posting a link to a fake story surrounding the assault on Paul Pelosi.

The headline read: ‘Elon Musk, in a Tweet, Shares Link From Site Known to Publish Fake News.’

He quipped: ‘This is fake – I did *not* tweet out a link to the New York Times.’

Musk earlier deleted a tweet suggesting Paul Pelosi’s attacker was a gay prostitute he met during a boozy night out.