Billion deal perfect
Elon Musk buys Twitter
4/25/2022, 8:59 p.m
First, Twitter wanted to prevent a takeover by Elon Musk. But now the online service is giving up its resistance. 44 billion dollars will go over the table – if the shareholders agree. But a notorious former user of the platform says he doesn’t want to go back.
Twitter has dropped opposition to a takeover by tech billionaire Elon Musk. The online service share withthat he has reached a deal with Musk. Twitter should be delisted after the takeover. The price remains at the $54.20 per share offered by Musk from the start, for a total of $44 billion (about 41 billion euros). Now it’s up to Twitter shareholders to decide whether to accept the offer. Musk stated, “Twitter has tremendous potential. I look forward to working with the company and users to realize it.”
The Twitter announcement gave no indication that Musk had already secured enough shareholder approval. According to previous information, he holds a good nine percent and should come to over 50 percent. Twitter has several major shareholders from the financial industry. According to media reports, the bank Morgan Stanley holds a good eight percent and the investment company Vanguard Group around ten percent. Twitter shares were trading at the $52 mark in New York on Monday, so investors still have slight doubts.
Despite constantly growing user numbers and regular headlines, profits on Twitter are not bubbling up in contrast to competitors such as Facebook or Google. Musk has already announced new features such as disclosure of the algorithms and “authentication of all people” to change that.
Musk explains his interest in Twitter with alleged restrictions on free speech on the short message service, which he wants to turn off. His takeover attack lasted only a few weeks. The billionaire announced in early April that he had quietly and secretly bought a good 9 percent stake in Twitter for weeks. Then the events rolled over: First, Musk should move into the Twitter board of directors. However, this would have been subject to the condition that the head of the electric car manufacturer Tesla did not increase his stake in Twitter by more than 15 percent. Instead, he turned down the seat on the supervisory board and announced that he wanted to buy the company.
The board of directors then introduced a countermeasure that allows other shareholders to buy shares at lower prices as soon as an attacker like Musk has a stake of more than 15 percent. At the same time, Twitter generally reserved the right to agree to a deal. The 50-year-old then presented commitments for loans of over 25.5 billion dollars last week and also wants to bring in shares worth around 21 billion dollars.
Is Trump coming back to Twitter?
Musk is by far the richest person in the world. However, his fortune consists almost exclusively of shares in Tesla and his space company SpaceX, so that he would also have to resort to credit for a Twitter purchase. Musk is one of the most active celebrity Twitter users and has around 83 million followers. He announced that he wants to make Twitter a “global platform for free speech” because this is important for civilisation. Musk’s promises of looser regulation drew criticism from experts.
His criticism of the state of free speech on Twitter resonates with supporters of ex-President Donald Trump and other US conservatives. Among other things, they have long railed against the fact that Twitter and other online platforms are taking action against false information about the corona virus and Trump’s uncovered allegations of election fraud. Trump was banned from Twitter after expressing sympathy for his supporters who stormed the US Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. Musk had sharply criticized the blocking at the time and accused Twitter of acting as a “judge” over freedom of expression.
The Twitter management has so far emphasized that there is no way back to the platform for the ex-president. Musk’s approaches could now make Trump sit up and take notice with a view to running again in the 2024 presidential election: he finds temporary “timeouts” better than permanent exclusions, said the Tesla boss in general. In the early days, Musk himself downplayed the dangers of the corona virus and criticized restrictions in California as “fascist”.
Founded in 2006, Twitter quickly became something of a news industry nervous system. The company currently has more than 217 million users. Twitter drew general public attention in 2009 after a user posted photos of a passenger plane that had landed in New York’s Hudson River. For Trump, Twitter was by far the most important means of communication both before and during his tenure, he had almost 90 million readers. However, Trump has already announced that he will not return to Twitter. He’s sticking with his own Twitter clone, Truth Social, Republican Fox News said.