(Boursier.com) — While Elon Musk created a surprise on Thursday by unveiling an unsolicited takeover offer on Twitterthe ‘New York Post’ claimed in the evening that the private equity firm Thomas Bravo was also working on an offer on the American social network, and could therefore appear as a rival of the boss of You’re here and SpaceX.
According to sources quoted by the American newspaper, “an internal working group is studying closely” the file at Thoma Bravo. According to one of the sources, the American firm of “private equity” could serve as a white knight for Twitter and its general manager Parag Agrawal. At this stage, however, it is not certain that Thoma Bravo will submit an offer on Twitter, said the New York Post.
Thoma Bravo, who this week announced the acquisition of the American cybersecurity company Sail Point for $6.9 billion, owns other technology companies, including McAffee, Landesk and Barracuda.
“Unlocking the potential of Twitter”
Elon Musk therefore surprised the markets by announcing an offer on Twitter on Thursday at $54.20 per share, specifying that it was “my best and last offer and if it is not accepted, I will have to reconsider my position as a shareholder. Twitter has extraordinary potential. I’m going to unblock it,” Musk wrote to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor. Recall that Musk had recently revealed that he had acquired 9.2% of Twitter’s capital.
Twitter responded that its board “will carefully review the offer to determine the course of action that he believes is in the best interests of the company and all shareholders of Twitter’.
While waiting for the response from the Twitter “board”, the richest man in the world has once again thrown the markets off balance, saying on Thursday evening that he was “not sure” of being able to acquire Twitter, even though he “technically had the ability”. Present at a TED technology conference in Vancouver, Canada, he explained that he wanted to keep as many shareholders as he was legally authorized for an unlisted company, or about 2,000. He added that he had a “Plan B” if Twitter rejected his offer, without further details…
Twitter and Tesla shares down on Wall Street
During the same conference, Elon Musk clarified that his goal in buying Twitter “is not to make money”, but to serve freedom of expression and democracy. In particular, it provides for make “apparent” any changes made to a tweet, in order to avoid any “behind-the-scenes manipulation, whether via algorithms or manual”.
On Wall Street, investors reacted cautiously to all of this information: the title Twitter initially climbed, but ended down 1.7% at $ 45.08 far from Musk’s offer. And Tesla fell 3.6% as markets questioned Musk’s ability to lead Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter together.
In post-session ratings, however, Twitter climbed 3.8% after information from the ‘New York Post’.