Twitter lost three more top executives amid Elon Musk takeover drama

• Three senior executives are leaving Twitter, Bloomberg reported.
• Elon Musk is trying to acquire Twitter, although one exec said that wasn't why he's leaving.

Three senior Twitter execs have left the company, meaning it has lost a total of five top execs since Elon Musk began his proposed $44 billion takeover of the company.

The departing execs as first reported by Bloomberg are: VP of product management Ilya Brown, VP of Twitter Service Katrina Lane, and head of data science Max Schmeiser.

Bloomberg saw memos from the executives announcing their departures, and reports each of them said they were leaving under their own steam.

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Brown confirmed he was leaving Twitter in a tweet and said his departure wasn't to do with Musk's bid to acquire the company.

—Ilya Brown (@ilyabr0wn) May 17, 2022

"We are thankful for all of their hard work and leadership," a Twitter spokesperson said of the departing execs in a statement to Bloomberg.

"We continue to be focused on providing the very best experience to the people on Twitter," they added.

The company shed two other top executives last week: general manager of Twitter, Kayvon Beykpour and revenue product lead, Bruce Falck.

Beykpour said he was asked to leave by CEO Parag Agrawal, and that Agrawal said he wanted to "take the team in a different direction."

Twitter also announced it was pausing hiring apart from "business-critical roles" — a move which mirrored an earlier announcement from Facebook. This comes amid a broad economic downturn, during which tech stocks have been hit particularly hard.

For Twitter, the economic uncertainty is compounded by the theatrics of Musk's proposed takeover. The Tesla billionaire has stalled the deal, claiming he needs to see proof of how Twitter calculates the number of spam and fake accounts on its platform.

This could be a ploy by Musk to force Twitter back to the negotiating table and haggle for a better price.

Twitter did not immediately respond when contacted by Insider for this article.