Britain’s Crown Estate, an independent trading company that manages the monarchy’s real estate portfolio, said Monday it had launched legal proceedings against Twitter over alleged unpaid rent at its London headquarters.
Court lists showed the case against Twitter was filed with the High Court in London last week.
In a statement, the Crown Estate, which owns some of the most expensive properties in central London, said the action was in relation to “rent arrears” at the social media platform’s offices in the British capital.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The company laid off half of its workforce after the takeover Elon Musk last October. In London, the office was abandoned and all evidence that Twitter once occupied the building was erased.
Last week, Elon Musk said Twitter has about 2,300 active employees, a day after CNBC reported that Twitter’s full-time workforce fell to about 1,300 active, working employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers by title.
About 75 of the company’s 1,300 employees are on furlough, including about 40 engineers, CNBC said, citing internal records. “The note is wrong. There are about 2,300 active employees working at Twitter,” billionaire Musk tweeted in reply to a tweet citing CNBC. “There are still hundreds of employees working on trust and security, along with several thousand contractors,” Musk added.
Musk took over Twitter in October and quickly implemented a series of product and organizational changes. The company introduced the Twitter-verified Blue Tick as a paid service and also laid off about 50 percent of its employees.
Last week it was time reported that Twitter plans to lay off 50 employees in the social media site’s product department in the coming weeks. The layoffs, which come six weeks after top boss Elon Musk reportedly told employees there would be no further cuts, could reduce the company’s workforce to under 2,000, according to the report.
