Twitter shareholders voted to kick an ally of Elon Musk off the company's board in an apparent snub to the billionaire
Andrew Kelly/Reuters
- Twitter shareholders voted Wednesday against re-electing board member Egon Durban.
- Durban, a private equity executive, is a longtime business associate of Elon Musk.
- Musk, who's buying Twitter for $44 billion, is at loggerheads with the company over fake accounts.
Twitter shareholders have voted to remove a longtime business associate of Elon Musk from the company's board.
At the company's annual meeting Wednesday, they voted against re-electing Egon Durban, co-CEO and managing partner of private equity firm Silver Lake.
Durban subsequently tendered his resignation, which is being considered by Twitter's board, a company spokesperson told Insider.
It's relatively rare for shareholders to vote to remove directors from company boards. Yesterday's vote suggests there's unease among Twitter investors about how Musk is handling his proposed $44 billion purchase of the company.
Since making the offer, which Twitter has accepted, Musk has been at loggerheads with Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal over the proportion of fake accounts on the social-media platform — a tactic that analysts believe Musk is using to push down the deal price.
Silver Lake invested in solar energy company SolarCity in 2015, which counted Musk as a board member and was founded by his cousins. Tesla later acquired SolarCity.
Musk said in 2018 that Silver Lake was acting as a financial advisor to Tesla when Musk declared he was taking Tesla private — a deal that never materialized, and got Musk into hot water with regulators.
Durban and Musk both sit on the board of Endeavor, a sports and entertainment company.
It was Durban who connected Musk to Agrawal and two other Twitter directors to discuss giving Musk a board seat after the billionaire bought a 9% stake in the company, a regulatory filing shows.
Musk initially contacted Twitter founder and then-board member Jack Dorsey about taking a seat on the company's board, according to the filing. Durban was the next member of Twitter's board contacted by Musk about the matter, the regulatory filing, by Twitter, shows.
Twitter's board ultimately offered Musk a board seat that he initially accepted, but later rejected in favor of acquiring the company outright.
A Twitter spokesperson said the board's nominating and corporate governance committees "will promptly consider whether to recommend that the board accept Mr Durban's resignation and provide an update in due course."
Musk announced on May 13 the Twitter deal was "temporarily on hold," saying wanted a full account of how Twitter calculates the percentage of fake or spam accounts on its platform. Twitter's shares fell 11% after his announcement.
Analysts have speculated Musk's proclamations are a ploy aimed at bringing Twitter back to the negotiating table to get a better price. Twitter executives have told staff the deal is still going ahead, but Musk's behavior has led to what one Twitter executive described as a "chaos tax" on the company.
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