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Elon Musk said on Wednesday he expected to reduce his time at Twitter and eventually find a new leader to run the social media company, adding that he hoped to complete an organisational restructuring this week.
Musk made the remarks while testifying in a Delaware court to defend against claims that his $56 billion (nearly Rs. 4,56,100 crore) pay package at Tesla was based on easy to achieve performance targets and was approved by a compliant board of directors.
“There’s an initial burst of activity needed post-acquisition to reorganize the company,” Musk said in his testimony. “But then I expect to reduce my time at Twitter.”
The billionaire’ s first two weeks as Twitter’s owner has been marked by rapid change and chaos. He quickly fired Twitter’s previous chief executive and other senior leaders and then laid off half of Twitter’s staff earlier this month.
As reported earlier, the trial will run through Friday and is being presided over by Judge Kathaleen McCormick, the same judge who was to preside over the Twitter case.
There is no deadline for her decision which could take months.
It’s “highly unusual” for this kind of case to be brought to trial, Jill Fisch, Law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told AFP.
“There aren’t all that many successful challenges to executive compensation (as) the courts have typically treated this as a business decision,” she added.
But the court found in this case that Musk’s ownership of about 22 percent of Tesla and his role as CEO “could have an undue impact” on the board and other shareholders, she noted.
Musk cancelled an in-person appearance on Sunday at an event on the sidelines of the G20 in Bali to be in court.
Asked why he had not travelled to the tropical Indonesian island, the new Twitter boss joked that his “workload has recently increased quite a lot” after his takeover of the social media giant.