Elon Musk is taking on Twitter’s board of directors in an effort to wrest control of the company and take it private in a $43 billion purchase. Here are the board members who will help decide Twitter’s fate.
Musk offered to purchase the social media company for $54.20 per share in cash. He transmitted his intentions on Wednesday in a letter to Bret Taylor, chairman of the board, and the news was later revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure. Soon after, reports emerged that the board may resist the buyout, which would likely require approval from its members.
Bret Taylor
Taylor is the chairman of Twitter but daylights as the co-CEO of Salesforce, a cloud-based software company. Taylor has a long history in social media. The 41-year-old was appointed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg to serve as chief technology officer at Facebook, a role he served in from 2009 to 2012. Prior to that, he worked as the CEO of early social media company FriendFeed.
Parag Agrawal
Agrawal, who joined Twitter in 2011, replaced Twitter founder Jack Dorsey as CEO of the company in November of last year. Dorsey had stepped down from the role to focus more of his time serving as chairman and CEO of the digital payment company Block, another one of his companies. Prior to leading Twitter, Agrawal served as the company’s chief technology officer.
Jack Dorsey
While he stepped down from Twitter’s helm just a few months ago, Dorsey has remained on his company’s board. Dorsey co-founded Twitter back in 2006 and helped grow it into the behemoth it is today. Dorsey, who like Musk is a major proponent of bitcoin, is perhaps the closest with Musk of those on the board and has praised Musk’s prolific Twitter use in the past.
Mimi Alemayehou
Alemayehou is the senior vice president for public-private partnership at Mastercard. Prior to joining Mastercard, she was a managing director and board member for investment platform Black Rhino Group, which is a portfolio company of Blackstone. She was also appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the executive vice president of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation from 2010 to 2014. While in that role, OPIC’s portfolio grew by more than 24%.
Egon Durban
Durban is the co-CEO of private investment firm Silver Lake, which he joined in 1999 as a founding principal. Durban concurrently serves on the board of directors for several companies and previously held a role as chairman of the operating committee of Skype.
Martha Lane Fox
Lane Fox works as the founder and chairwoman of Lucky Voice Group, a London-based karaoke services company that also owns private karaoke venues around the world. She has held a seat on Twitter’s board since 2016 and has served on various other private company boards.
Omid Kordestani
Kordestani is an Iranian-born businessman who has been a member of Twitter’s board of directors since 2015. He served as the company’s executive chairman from 2015 to 2020. He previously held senior roles at Google and Netscape Communications Corporation.
Fei-Fei Li
Li is the sequoia professor in Stanford University’s computer science department. She also serves as the co-director for Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and previously worked as the director of the university’s AI lab. Li has previously served in roles at Google.
Patrick Pichette
Pichette is a Canadian businessman who serves as a general partner at venture capital firm Inovia Capital. He was previously Google’s chief financial officer from 2008 to 2015.
David Rosenblatt
Rosenblatt is the CEO of e-commerce and luxury marketplace 1stDibs, where he has served for more than a decade. The company went public last year in an initial public offering. He worked at Google prior to that and has sat on Twitter’s board since 2010.
Robert Zoellick
Zoellick is the former board chairman for AllianceBernstein Holding, a role in which he served from 2017 to 2019. From 2007 to 2012, he was president of the World Bank Group. Zoellick was the deputy secretary for the Department of State from 2005 until 2006 and served as the 13th U.S. trade representative from 2001 to 2005. He also spent time as George H.W. Bush’s White House deputy chief of staff. Zoellick has been a member of Twitter’s board since 2018.
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Musk has apparently begun to push back on reports that the board is not too pleased with his attempt to buy Twitter. On Thursday afternoon, he suggested that shareholders and not the board should have a say in the matter.
“It would be utterly indefensible not to put this offer to a shareholder vote. They own the company, not the board of directors,” Musk tweeted.
