Twitter, which was acquired last week by billionaire Elon Musk, plans to let go of a quarter of its workforce as part of what is expected to be a first round of layoffs, the Washington Post reported on Monday, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Celebrity lawyer Alex Spiro, a long-time Musk legal representative, led the conversations about the job cuts, according to the report.

Twitter had more than 7 000 employees at the end of 2021, according to a regulatory filing, and a quarter of the headcount amounts to nearly 2 000 people.

Musk denied a New York Times report about laying off Twitter employees at a date earlier than 1 November to avoid stock grants due on the day.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read: Twitter plans to revise how it verifies users: Musk

Musk fired Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, finance chief Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde on completion of a six-month, US$44-billion buyout saga of the social media platform on Thursday, sources said. — Akash Sriram, (c) 2022 Reuters