Elon Musk will begin massive Twitter layoffs on Friday, say reports

Billionaire expected to fire half of 7,500 employees at San Francisco-based company

Elon Musk will begin massive Twitter layoffs on Friday a week after closing his $44bn deal for the social media platform, say reports.

The San Francisco-based company currently has around 7,500 staff and around half of those are set to lose their jobs according to The New York Times.

The billionaire reportedly told investors before the deal he wanted to get rid of 75 per cent of employees but appears to have settled on a lower number.

Twitter employees were notified about the layoffs in an email on Thursday and told not to come into the office on Friday as the firings are carried out, reported the newspaper.

“Team, In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday,” the email to staff read, according to The Washington Post.

“We recognize that this will impact a number of individuals who have made valuable contributions to Twitter, but this action is unfortunately necessary to ensure the company’s success moving forward.”

Mr Musk finally completed his protracted purchase of the company on 27 October and immediately fired top executives including CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and legal chief Vijaya Gadde.

A court had given him until Friday 28 October to close his April agreement to acquire the company after he earlier tried to back out of the deal.

Mr Musk, the world’s richest person, agreed to buy the company for $54.20 a share in April, but by July had indicated that he had changed his mind, citing bot and spam issues.

He renewed his attempt to acquire the company earlier in October.