Twitter investors block Elon Musk ally's re-election to board

Twitter Ince investor on Wednesday blocked re-election of Elon Musk ally to the board. The development took place at an annual meeting.

Investors voted against Egon Durban, the co-head of private equity firm Silver Lake, who partnered with Tesla CEO Musk on his abandoned bid to take the electric carmaker private.

The rebuke of Durban, who joined the board in 2020, comes as uncertainty looms over the deal.

Musk has already said via a tweet that Twitter deal was "temporarily on hold". He has sought more information about proportion of fake accounts on Twitter.

The company last week said it remained committed to the deal at the agreed price and on Wednesday said it would not answer questions about the deal at the virtual meeting.

"The Twitter board has not embraced Elon Musk and his vision for Twitter. So the fact that his ally has been removed from the board is not surprising," said Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners in Pittsburgh.

When Musk offered the price of USD 44 billion to acquire Twitter, the board of the social media giant had initially had sought to adopt a 'poison pill' strategy which would limit Musk's ability to raise stake in Twitter. However, the board later unanimously accepted his buyout offer.

Wednesday's vote to block re-election of Durban may indicate skepticism amog sharholders of Elon Musk's willingness to pay what he offered.

However, another meeting has been scheduled and investors are expected to overwhelmingly approve the deal.

(With inputs from agencies)

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