Twitter shareholders meet amid Musk’s takeover drama

Twitter’s regularly scheduled shareholder meeting Wednesday didn’t include a vote on Tesla billionaire Elon Musk’s $44 billion bid for the social platform. But the prospects of the buyout and the drama that’s surrounded it seemed to be on participants’ minds anyway.

CEO Parag Agrawal said at the outset that executives won’t be answering any questions surrounding the proposal. Even a question from a stockholder asking what will happen to his shares if someone buys Twitter and takes it private was shot down. (If that happens, the stockholder would be paid the agreed-upon purchase price for each share and the stock would be delisted).

Musk did not join the meeting, although he could have, being one of Twitter’s largest shareholders. The shareholder vote on the deal, meanwhile, will take place at a yet-undetermined date in the future.

But the drama surrounding his offer — almost all of it created by Musk himself — threatened to spill over into Wednesday’s proceedings. Shareholders raising proposals for a vote frequently invoked his name. One proposal, by the New York State Common Retirement Fund, called for a report on Twitter’s policies and procedures around political contributions using corporate funds. It passed in a preliminary vote.

Two proposals brought by conservative-leaning groups failed to garner enough votes to pass. One called for an audit on the company’s “impacts on civil rights and non-discrimination” and referred to “‘anti-racism’ programs that seek to establish ‘racial/ social equity’” as “themselves deeply racist.” The other sought more disclosure on the company’s lobbying activities.