Activist hedge fund Elliott Management, owned by the billionaire Trump supporter Paul Singer, has purchased a large stake in Twitter in a bid to oust its chief executive Jack Dorsey, according to reports.

Bloomberg reported that the activist hedge fund has nominated four directors to the company's board, although only three seats will become available at the company's annual meeting this year.

This was so that Elliott, which is believed to hold more than 4% of Twitter shares, would have nominated enough directors to fill all seats and any other vacancies which could arise.

Image: The company's shares were trading up pre-market

The fund privately raised concerns about Mr Dorsey, who is also the chief executive at Square - a fintech company which has a larger market cap than Twitter and in which he owns a 13% stake.

Mr Dorsey is the only person to simultaneously handle the role of chief executive at two companies worth more than $10bn


Twitter's shares rose 7.8% in pre-market trading following Bloomberg's report.

Mr Dorsey has been criticised by Donald Trump, especially after Twitter announced a ban on all political advertising on its platform.

That move, coming ahead of the US 2020 election, was criticised as "very dumb" by the incumbent president's campaign team and described as "yet another attempt to silence conservatives".

President Trump is a prolific user of Twitter, using his personal account with more than 73 million followers to spread his messages.

Mr Dorsey explained the decision in a series of tweets saying "political message reach should be earned, not bought".

"A political message earns reach when people decide to follow an account or retweet," he added.

"Paying for reach removes that decision, forcing highly optimised and targeted political messages on people. We believe this decision should not be compromised by money."

Mr Trump's election campaign team called the ban a "very dumb decision for their stockholders" as Twitter would lose "hundreds of millions of dollars of potential revenue".

The statement from campaign manager Brad Parscale called it "yet another attempt to silence conservatives, since Twitter knows President Trump has the most sophisticated online programme ever known".