Twitter strikes deal with activist investor to keep Jack Dorsey on as CEO

Twitter announced a truce with billionaire Paul Singer’s hedge fund Elliott Management that will allow Jack Dorsey to remain chief executive, only a week after a report that the fund was looking to oust him.

The Monday announcement also revealed that tech investing giant Silver Lake Partners would be making a $1 billion investment in Twitter, which will be used to fuel a $2 billion share repurchase program.

Egon Durban, managing partner of Silver Lake; and Jesse Cohn, partner at Paul Singer’s Elliott; will be appointed to Twitter’s board.

Dorsey, who is also CEO of the payments company Square, rankled investors in November when he announced he would spend as much as six months this year working from Africa — a tweet he called “a mistake” last week.

But Monday’s release had Twitter’s board coming to the defense of the CEO and Twitter co-founder, who had reportedly been on shaky ground as Elliott sought to replace him over the company’s weak stock performance compared to other social networking giants.

“We are deeply proud of our accomplishments and confident we are on the right path with Jack’s leadership and the executive team,” Patrick Pichette, lead independent director of Twitter’s board said. “As a board, we regularly review and evaluate how Twitter is run, and while our CEO structure is unique, so is Jack and so is this company.”

Pichette will helm a temporary committee to review Twitter’s leadership structure, and report any findings to the board “on an ongoing basis.”

CFRA Research analyst John Freeman said he felt better about Twitter moving forward thanks to Silver Lake’s involvement, noting that “they turn stuff around right.”

“I’m comfortable with their judgment about Dorsey,” he said. “Those guys are really good when it comes to tech, they know what they’re doing.”

Elliott’s Cohn said he is “looking forward to working with Jack” and the board to realize “Twitter’s full potential.”

Dorsey isn’t out of the woods yet, however. Pichette’s committee will share the results of its review publicly before the end of the year.