Elon Musk closed his $44 billion purchase of Twitter on Oct. 27, some six months after he first announced his intention to buy the social media platform.
The acquisition is the largest take-private deal since the 2016 purchase of data storage company EMC by Dell for $67 billion, according to PitchBook Data.
The closing of the deal follows months of public acrimony between Musk and Twitter leadership, an attempt by Musk to back out of the deal and lawsuits.
On the evening the deal closed, Musk sent a tweet that said “the bird is freed,” and news organizations reported the transaction was complete and that Musk had fired four senior leaders at the company. The next day, Twitter filed to have its stock delisted.
Musk’s takeover of Twitter became highly controversial because of his stated intent to reduce content moderation on the platform and, among other things, allow former President Donald Trump, who was banned from Twitter after the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, back on the platform.
Shortly before the deal closed, Musk posted a note directed at advertisers in which he said Twitter should not become a “free-for-all hellscape where anything can be said with no consequences.” The day after the deal closed, he said in a tweet that “no major content decisions or account reinstatements” would take place before a newly formed content moderation council met.
Take-private activity hit a high-water mark in 2007 and has yet to return to its pre-global financial crisis levels. Last year, $116 billion worth of take-private deals were completed, the most since 2016, according to PitchBook data.
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Featured image of Elon Musk by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
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