(Boursier.com) — Twitter stabilized at $51.3 on Wall Street, not far from the price of $54.2 per share finally accepted by the richest man on the planet, Elon Musk, for the acquisition of the social media network. According to the New York Times, the billionaire will have fought until the end to reduce the addition. He had first sought to negotiate a 30% rebate on the 44 billion dollars of the initial deal. People familiar with the matter told the NYT that Twitter pushed back on the offer at a discount to $31 billion. Last week, Musk tried his luck again and led discussions around a 10% discount on the initial price. For reasons that the New York Times is unable to explain, no agreement was reached around this price.
The social media network finally announced the day before yesterday that it had received a letter from Elon Musk’s teams. The richest man in the world will therefore buy the group well, this new twist occurring just before a trial which promised to be delicate for him. Twitter’s intention is confirmed, namely to finalize the transaction under the initial conditions, at $54.2 per share.
Recall that Musk had previously tried to abandon the operation. He indeed estimated the proportion of fake and bot accounts on the social network to be far too high, much higher than the “less than 5%” claimed by the group. But the businessman has therefore surprised again with one of his quick turnarounds of which he has the secret. “To buy Twitter is an accelerator to create X, the universal application”, launched the billionaire in a tweet. “Twitter probably accelerates X by a ratio of 3 to 5, but I could be wrong”, insisted Musk, also referring to “the original vision X.com”, what some believe could be a great application “à la WeChat” including social network, e-commerce and payment.
Musk is therefore now ready to proceed with the acquisition at the initial price of 44 billion dollars, which would put an end to the conflict between the businessman, boss of You’re here and SpaceX, and the blue bird social media network. The fight between Musk and Twitter had damaged the reputation of the Twitter brand in recent months and probably also a little that of the stormy billionaire. Musk had agreed in April to acquire the platform, before doing an about-face… Reuters understands that Musk and Twitter could put an end to this legal dispute very quickly.
The multi-billionaire’s new turnaround comes before a tense confrontation with Twitter in front of a Delaware court on October 17. The social network sought to obtain an injunction compelling Musk to execute in the initial terms, which he therefore finally decided to do.
In July, Musk thought he could withdraw without penalty, highlighting the very high number of bot accounts and thus challenging the group’s announcements on this subject. Twitter’s legal team said in late September that specialists employed by Musk estimated the proportion of fake accounts on the platform to be between 5.3 and 11%.
Among the big winners of the case, we find the activist investor Carl Icahn, who had wisely amassed in recent months, according to the Wall Street Journal, a participation of more than 500 million dollars in the capital of the blue bird. Icahn would have paid around $35 per title according to the report. The added value for the billionaire could thus be more than 250 million dollars! Icahn’s bet was precisely based on Musk avoiding the lawsuit and finalizing the initial transaction. Third Point, a firm of Daniel Loeb, or DE Shaw, have also acquired Twitter titles in recent months in the same spirit.
It should be noted, however, that according to several sources close to the question cited by Reuters, Apollo Global Management and Sixth Street Partners, who planned to participate in the financing of Musk’s acquisition offer, would have ended the discussions.