Gregory Robinson
Elon Musk’s net worth has gotten a bit smaller after he finally bought Twitter this week.
Musk, 51, said he purchased the platform to ‘try to help humanity,’ and not to make money.
Before sealing his Twitter deal for a cool $44 billion (£36.6 billion), Musk’s estimated net worth was $212 billion, but this has now gone down to $204 billion - which is more money than most of us will ever see in our bank accounts.
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Musk's net worth has fallen $66 billion this year, per calculations by the Bloomberg wealth index, and after purchasing the social media network on Friday (28 October) he became $8 billion poorer.
The tech entrepreneur was in a race against time to get his long gestating deal done as the deadline inched closer.
The business magnate first revealed his intention to buy Twitter on 14 April after he began buying shares in the company, leading to him becoming the company’s largest shareholder.
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He made an offer to buy Twitter for $44 billion that same month. Upon his proposal he said he wanted ‘civilisation to have a common digital town square’ and confirmed his plan to clean up spam accounts and preserve the platform’s free speech.
However he walked away from the deal in July.
Although, just a few months later, on 4 October the Tesla chief executive offered to go through with his original $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter once again.
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Musk’s lawyers confirmed his intentions to pursue Twitter in court filings on that date, which followed a report from Bloomberg stating he had written to Twitter offering to close the deal at the original price of $54.20 (£46.67) a share.
Twitter investor Ross Gerber, chief executive of Gerber Kawasaki Investments in California, told the BBC on Friday that Musk’s deal was done.
He said: "I think the court pushed him over the line.
"Quite frankly, this has sort of been a disaster from the beginning, of course, starting off very aggressively courting Twitter in a way that really forced Twitter to the table... then getting all upset and having a public spat over what to me was pretty well known issues."
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Musk celebrated his new acquisition by sharing a tweet – as you naturally would as the new owner of Twitter. It said: “The bird is freed.”
Not long after Musk took over the company, several Twitter executives were fired as part of his reported plans to lay off 75 percent of its workforce.
The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN and others say Twitter’s chief executive Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, top legal and policy executive Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett have all been given fired.
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Before you shed a tear for them though, the fired execs are apparently set to receive a huge payout.