Jack Dorsey quits Twitter’s board of directors weeks after Musk deal

Plan to leave board has been in place since Jack Dorsey stepped down as company’s chief last year

Former Twitter chief Jack Dorsey has stepped down from the company’s board of directors amid Tesla chief Elon Musk’s controversial bid to take over the social media giant.

Mr Dorsey’s exit is effective as of the shareholders’ meeting on Wednesday.

His plan to leave the company’s board of directors was already in place since he stepped down as the platform’s chief in November last year. The company had said at that time that Mr Dorsey would “remain a member of the Board until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders”.

When Mr Dorsey quit as the head of Twitter in 2021, he had said the idea of founders leading tech firms is “severely limiting and a single point of failure”.

The move comes amid Mr Musk’s controversial bid to take over the social media platform. Mr Dorsey could roll his 2.4 per cent stake in the social media platform into the deal, rather than cash out his almost $1bn worth of shares.

There is growing uncertainty about Twitter’s future as Mr Musk’s proposed acquisition is still pending.

The Tesla and SpaceX chief had said on 12 May that he was putting the deal “temporarily on hold” until he got more information about fake accounts and bots on the platform. But a day later, he added that he’s “still committed” to buying Twitter.

The social media giant said fake and spam accounts represent fewer than 5 per cent of the users on its platform, in a filing earlier this month. But Mr Musk said the deal was temporarily on hold “pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5 per cent of users”.

Mr Dorsey’s exit from Twitter also marks the end of an era, but the former chief has been supportive of the Tesla chief’s deal, calling Mr Musk’s takeover the “singular solution” he trusts.

The Twitter co-founder had said he wants the platform to be a public good “at a protocol level”, and not a company.

“Solving for the problem of it being a company, however, Elon is the singular solution I trust,” the former Twitter chief said last month.

“Elon’s goal of creating a platform that is ‘maximally trusted and broadly inclusive’ is the right one. This is also @paraga’s goal, and why I chose him,” he said referring to Twitter’s current chief Parag Agrawal.

Meanwhile, reports claim Twitter’s board is in a state of “turmoil” after investors ousted one of Mr Musk’s key allies.

Egon Durban, a long-time backer of Mr Musk, “has tendered his resignation” from Twitter’s board and the company hasn’t decided whether to accept it, CNBC reported.

Mr Durban, who is the co-chief and managing director of private equity firm Silver Lake, didn’t receive enough votes from Twitter investors at the company’s shareholder meeting on Wednesday to be reelected to the board.

“In accordance with the Company’s Corporate Governance Guidelines, Egon Durban has tendered his resignation to the Board, with the effectiveness of such resignation conditioned upon the Board’s acceptance of such resignation,” a Twitter spokesperson told CNBC.

The question of whether the social media giant will complete a sale to Mr Musk was avoided at the meeting, according to The Telegraph.