Elon Musk trolling Twitter? After snubbing board seat, Tesla CEO set to make more trouble

tech.hindustantimes.com:

Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter. Elon Musk wants to influence Twitter. Elon Musk wants to poke Twitter with a stick until he gets bored. It is hard to know what is inside the head of Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who became Twitter Inc.’s biggest shareholder and then rejected a seat on the board in an about-face on Saturday. The most realistic prediction about his future actions came from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on Sunday night: “There will be distractions ahead.” 

Keeping Musk on the board meant the billionaire could only make trouble from inside Twitter and within strict constraints: Musk’s 9% stake could go no higher than 14.9%. He’d be a class II director until 2024, preventing him from taking over the company’s board. Not only would Musk be unable to take over Twitter, he likely wouldn’t have much impact on the service either, as influencing product decisions from the board is notoriously difficult.

Snubbing a board seat runs counter to how activist shareholders normally operate. Elliott Management Corp., which owns a large stake in Twitter, pushed to replace CEO Jack Dorsey in 2020 and nominated four directors for the board to give it more sway.

But Musk doesn’t go down conventional routes. He can simply tweet a product idea to his 80 million followers over a weekend and get Twitter to speed up changes that may or may not have been in the pipeline.

If buying 9% of Twitter was a capitalist power play, rejecting a board seat was a nuclear dropkick for the social media era. Musk has put himself in a position where he can now buy significantly more stock.(1) He can push the company on product ideas with the backing of millions of Twitter users. He’s free to bring his stake up to 51% and become majority