Twitter shakeup: Dorsey steps down from board
WASHINGTON: Jack Dorsey, the former chief executive officer (CEO) of Twitter Inc, has officially left the social network’s board, ending his formal relationship with the company he co-founded in 2006.
At the company’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, Twitter said Egon Durban, the co-CEO of private equity firm Silver Lake, also failed to get enough votes for re-election as a director.
It wasn’t a surprise that Dorsey, who has been on the board since 2007, didn’t stand for reinstatement to the panel. He said he would leave the board in November, when he also announced he was stepping down as CEO.
However, his exit is the first time in Twitter’s history that none of its co-founders is working at the company or sitting on the board.
Twitter shareholders voted on a number of corporate updates on Wednesday, but didn’t weigh in on the biggest change confronting the San Francisco-based company: a looming buyout by billionaire Elon Musk.
Twitter’s board accepted an offer from Musk in late April to take the company private for about $44 billion. The shareholder vote on whether or not to approve the deal will take place at a date yet to be announced. Musk, the world’s richest person, has pledged dramatic changes at Twitter once he takes over and the current board isn’t expected to stay in place once he takes the company private.
Also declining to stand for re-election on Wednesday was Robert Zoellick, former president of the World Bank, who has been a Twitter director since 2018.
Twitter board member Patrick Pichette, Google’s former finance chief, was re-elected. Other directors’ seats weren’t up for renewal this year.