Peace made between Jack Dorsey and the Elliott fund. Twitter has announced that it has reached an agreement with the fund led by Paul Singer and with Silver Lake, a Californian private equity firm. The agreement will allow the founder and CEO of the popular social network to remain in his position despite the excesses of the US fund, known in Italy for being a shareholder of AC Milan.
Elliott bought about a billion shares of Twitter and last week named four directors to the board. Soon after, the US fund, which figures among Donald Trump's main supporters, tried to promote change at the top of San Francisco society: Dorsey Street, inside a manager who could work full time to grow the company without further "distractions". The initiative was undertaken after the announcement by Dorsey - who also manages the Square company - that he wanted to temporarily move to Africa, a move that had been poorly received by investors.
With the agreement reached on March 9, Dorsey saves his CEO seat, at least for now. Not only, the deal calls for Silver Lake to invest $1 billion in Twitter. As a result, the company will fund a $2 billion share repurchase program. It also establishes that Silver Lake co-CEO Egon Durham and Jesse Cohn of Elliott Management will sit on Twitter's board of directors which will consist of three new members. Finally, the creation of a committee to review leadership and governance is planned.
In New York, Twitter shares recovered part of the losses recorded in the premarket and at 15.40 it lost 0,8% to 33,18 dollars per share, a more than decent performance considering the sharp drop in the Nasdaq (-5,27%), weighed down like the other global stock exchanges by the coronavirus emergency and the oil began after the attack on Russia and the producing countries by Saudi Arabia which decided to lower prices to increase production.
