(Reuters) – Billionaire Elon Musk will step down as CEO of Twitter on Monday, once he finds a replacement, but several key units of the social media platform will remain in control. He said it would continue to operate.
“I will step down as CEO as soon as I find a moron to take over,” Musk wrote on Twitter.
Musk’s October acquisition of Twitter for $44 billion has been turbulent and controversial, with some investors believing Mr Musk was too distracted to run electric car maker Tesla properly. I doubt that. (TSLA.O)and he is personally involved in production and engineering.
It’s the first time Musk has mentioned the resignation of the head of the social media platform after a Twitter user. voted as he stepped down in a poll that billionaires launched Sunday night.
A poll showed that 57.5% of approximately 17.5 million people voted “yes”. Musk said on Sunday he would follow the results. The timing of his retirement has not been announced, and no successor has been decided.
The poll results cap off a tumultuous week that included changes to Twitter’s privacy policy and the suspension (and reopening) of journalist accounts.
Calls for Musk’s resignation have been mounting on Wall Street for weeks, and even Tesla’s bulls have recently warned of his focus on social media platforms and his move away from running an electric-vehicle maker. I am questioning how it can be distracted.
Musk himself has said he has too many things on his hands and is looking for a Twitter CEO. But he said on Sunday that there will be no successor and that “nobody wants a job that can actually keep Twitter alive.”
Reporting by Anne Maria Shiv and Juby Babu of Bengaluru. Edited by Sandra Maler, Anne Marie Roantree
Our criteria: Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
