Is Twitter now threatened with a wave of layoffs after the takeover by Elon Musk? However, the US Treasury Department is likely to be interested in a completely different question at the moment.
According to media reports, the new Twitter owner Elon Musk is planning major job cuts after the expensive takeover of the online service. For example, the financial service Bloomberg and the “Financial Times” wrote on Thursday night, citing informed people, that there are around 3,700 jobs at stake – around half of the previous Twitter workforce. The website Axios reported that Musk wants to cut a third of the jobs or more. The dismantling should be announced on Friday. At the same time, the media limited that the exact numbers could still change.
Musk had paid around $44 billion for Twitter. The company was recently in the red and Musk had made stopping the losses a priority. Musk had rejected earlier reports that the cuts could reach 75 percent of the jobs. This time, even hours later, he did not comment on the media information.
No more home office
According to the reports, Musk also wants to request the return of at least most of the remaining employees to the offices. Twitter was one of the first companies to give its employees the freedom to work from anywhere as long as possible during the corona pandemic. Musk had already enforced a strict presence requirement at the electric car manufacturer Tesla, which he also heads as boss, after the end of corona restrictions.
According to the Washington Post, the deal could still attract the attention of a US government body that controls foreign investments. The Ministry of Finance has asked Twitter for more information on the role of investors with ties to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and China in the takeover, the paper said. In particular, it is about whether they could get access to information such as user data.
Musk received money for the acquisition from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a subsidiary of Qatari mutual fund and cryptocurrency exchange Binance, which was originally founded in China. Foreign access to Americans’ data is a major concern for US authorities and has already led to action against the popular video app Tiktok, which belongs to the Chinese group Bytedance.