Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will step down and a successor has been arranged, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters. The company’s board has been preparing for Dorsey’s departure since last year, the source said. The news comes as Twitter has sped up its product innovation over the past year to compete with social media rivals like Facebook and TikTok, while also hitting a target of doubling annual revenue by the end of the year. year 2023.
Twitter was not immediately available for comment.
Shares of the microblogging platform jumped 9% in initial trading, while shares of the digital payments company square, among them Dorsey also chief executive officer, rose 3%.
Trading in the shares was subsequently suspended ahead of an expected announcement.
In his latest tweet on November 28, Dorsey said: “I love twitter.” The “likes” on that tweet grew to more than 54,000 on Monday.
CNBC is the first The report Dorsey’s move.
In early 2020, Dorsey faced calls to resign from Elliott Management Corp, after the hedge fund deemed he paid too little attention to Twitter while running payment processing company Square Inc.
Dorsey has resisted the pressure by letting Elliott and its ally, the acquisition company Silver Lake Partners, sit on Twitter’s board.
© Thomson Reuters 2021
