Parag Agrawal, who took over as CEO last fall after the company’s co-founder Jack Dorsey stepped down, is said to be starting to “struggle” after Musk repeatedly criticized the company for committing to buyouts and take private. “Parag wants to push back more and is more aggressive internally,” a former Twitter executive told the Financial Times. “It looks like Twitter is willing to go to war to make this deal happen.” Agrawal should receive a $42 million payment under the current terms of the buyout. As with some other Twitter executives, Agrawal’s payout will be triggered by a so-called “change of control” clause in their contracts, which kicks in if either of them is terminated within 12 months of the company’s new ownership taking over. Shares of Twitter fell nearly 4% in the first hour of trading on Wall Street on Friday. The company’s stock was hovering around $37.25 a share — well below the $54.20 a share at which Musk agreed to buy out shareholders and take the company private. The Washington Post reported Thursday that Musk, the Tesla chief executive whose estimated fortune of $223 billion makes him the richest man in the world, could walk away from the deal because he believes he does not have enough information to determine the levels of fake accounts. Musk, who has pledged to buy Twitter for $44 billion, has been critical of the company’s management.AP Musk has claimed that Twitter’s spam accounts are unverifiable — even as the social media giant in early June gave in to Musk’s demands to provide information on hundreds of millions of daily tweets. It was also reported by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that Twitter has laid off a third of its talent acquisition team. The company had recently announced a hiring freeze as the tech sector remains in the throes of an economic downturn. Agrawal, the 38-year-old Indian-origin Stanford graduate, spent four years as Twitter’s chief technology officer before succeeding Dorsey. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal is said to be willing to ‘turn back’ on Elon Musk.Getty Images According to the FT, his lack of executive experience and penchant for avoiding public appearances has fueled skepticism among board members that he has the strength to take on the charismatic Musk. Since the $44 billion deal was announced earlier this year, Musk has publicly lambasted Twitter over its content moderation policy, as well as its alleged failure to adequately curb fake accounts. Privately, Agrawal has been much more aggressive in pushing back against these claims, the FT reports. The common perception about Agrawal is that he is more of an “unknown quantity”. “Parag feels more like an engineer put in charge of a product than someone with a vision,” an advertising agency executive told the FT. Twitter has also laid off a third of its talent acquisition team.AP “Twitter needs a leader to step up and make Twitter a market presence.” In May, Agrawal took to Twitter to defend the company’s efforts to eliminate spam and bot accounts — prompting Musk to respond with an emoji. Despite the controversy, Agrawal and Musk remain on cordial terms, according to the FT. Both men reportedly see eye-to-eye on the need to diversify the company’s revenue streams as well as tighten its content-censoring policy. Twitter, perhaps anticipating news from Musk, held a call early Thursday with select members of the media in which it said it was removing 1 million spam accounts a day. The company also reiterated that fake users account for less than 5% of its user base, as it says in its quarterly earnings. Musk is scheduled to speak Saturday at the Allen & Co. conference. Sun Valley, Idaho, where he was expected to talk about the Twitter deal, a source said.
