Elon Musk won’t join Twitter board, CEO Agrawal says

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has decided to not join Twitter board, but would continue to suggest changes to the microblogging site as its largest shareholder, CEO Parag Agrawal said in a statement.

“Elon’s appointment to the board was to become officially effective 4/9, but Elon shared that same morning that he will no longer be joining the board. I believe this is for the best. We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our Board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input,” Agrawal said.

The world’s richest man’s decision to turn down Twitter’s offer comes after the U.S. Securities regulator pulled up Musk for not submitting relevant paperwork in connection with his Twitter share purchase, reports The Hindu

The Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) also noted that Musk delayed submission of the forms, and did not mention that he would play an active role in the company’s affairs.

Last week, Musk disclosed his 9.2% stake in Twitter after purchasing about 73.5 million Twitter shares, which are held by the Elon Musk Revocable Trust.

According to a Twitter filing, Musk couldn’t have owned over 14.9% of Twitter’s common stock either as an individual shareholder or as a member of a group as long as he was appointed as a director of Twitter.

On Saturday, Musk suggested some changes to Twitter’s Blue subscription service, such as a reduction of the subscription fee, prohibiting ads, and an option to pay with the cryptocurrency dogecoin.

Twitter Blue subscription service, which was launched in June last year, gives the subscribers early access to features that the micro-blogging platform is testing.

In January, the micro-blogging platform introduced a new feature that allows some users to display non-fungible tokens (NFTs) they own as their profile pictures on the social media platform.