Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey Announces He is Stepping Down From Company

One of the biggest headlines on Monday was the sudden announcement from Twitter’s Chief Executive Jack Dorsey that he was stepping down from his role.

Dorsey, 45, was serving as both the CEO of Twitter and digital payments company Square.

Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s chief technology officer, is taking over as CEO effective immediately said the company. He has served as CTO since 2017 and has been with Twitter for more than a decade.

Argral had research internships at AT&T, Microsoft and Yahoo prior to joining Twitter.

He had been in charge of strategy involving artificial intelligence and machine learning and he led projects to make tweets in users’ timelines more relevant to them.

Dorsey will remain a member of the board until his term expires at the 2022 meeting of stockholders.

Salesforce President and COO Bret Taylor will become the chairman of the board, succeeding Patrick Pichette. Pichette is a former Google executive who will remain on the board as chair of the audit committee.

“I’ve decided to leave Twitter because I believe the company is ready to move on from its founders,” Dorsey said in a statement.
No additional details were provided about why he made the decision to step down.

Dorsey said in an email he published on Twitter that Agrawal has been his choice to lead the company “for some time given how deeply he understands the company and its needs.”

It was in 2020 that Twitter stakeholder Elliott Management had sought to replace Dorsey. Elliott issued a statement on Monday’s news, noting that its collaboration with Jack and Twitter over the past couple of years has been productive.

“Twitter is now executing against an ambitious multi-year plan to dramatically increase the company’s reach and value, and we look forward to the next chapter of Twitter’s story,” the company’s managing partner Jesse Cohn and senior portfolio manager Marc Steinberg said. “Having gotten to know both incoming Chairman Bret Taylor and incoming CEO Parag Agrawal, we are confident that they are the right leaders for Twitter at this pivotal moment for the company.”

Shares of Twitter closed down 2.74% on the day as Wall Street digested the news.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.