Elon Musk-Twitter A Done Deal: In a mega-deal, billionaire Elon Musk has now officially bought the social site, Twitter. Musk has acquired the platform for approximately $44 billion with shares valued at $54.20. Tesla CEO had announced his bid for Twitter on April 14, calling it his ‘best and final offer’. However, in its desperate attempt to defend the hostile takeover, Musk’s bid saw a ‘poison pill defence.’ Meanwhile, once it was announced by Musk that he had secured funding, the board went into negotiations with the Tesla boss. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, on Friday, Musk met “privately with several shareholders of the company to extol the virtues of his proposal” and also made video calls to them to push for his case.
A Timeline of the Elon Musk-Twitter Saga
-Before Elon Musk bid for Twitter, the US regulators had urged a federal judge not to let the executive get away with tweeting with abandon.
-Soon after that the SEC regulators, urged a judge to monitor Musk’s tweets, the SpaceX CEO expressed he was giving serious thought to building the “next Twitter.”
-On April 4, 2022, Twitter came out with a public statement that Musk has taken a 9.2 per cent share of the company, working out to around $2.9 billion based on March 4 share price.
-Next day, on April 5, 2022, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Elon Musk was appointed to Twitter’s board in a series of tweets. Agrawal tweeted that I’m excited to share that we’re appointing @elonmusk to our board! Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board.”
-However, in a major u-turn, later that week, Twitter CEO announced he would not be joining the social media firm’s board.
-The disclosure from Agrawal follows a series of unusual tweets from Elon Musk over the same weekend in which he wondered aloud to his over 80 million followers if Twitter was dying, citing low frequency of tweets from some of the most popular personalities on the social network.
-Twitter shareholder sues the Tesla CEO in a federal securities class action lawsuit because Musk failed to disclose his 5 per cent stake in Twitter when he was required to do so.
-This delay allowed Musk to buy more shares of Twitter at a lower price and cheat sellers of Twitter stock out of increased profits, the plaintiff claims.
-Elon Musk makes an offer to buy the whole company, Twitter, at $54.20 per share at $43 billion on April 14. He filed the offer with the SEC and tweeted a copy of the official offer.
-On April 15, Twitter’s board turns toward the defense everyone anticipated, the poison pill.
-Regarding funding, Musk says that he intends to borrow around $13 billion in various fashions; borrow $12.5 billion against his own equity holdings; and pay around $21 billion from his own holdings.
-On April 25, Twitter’s board meets to discuss Musk’s offer, and the NYT reports that they then entered into negotiations with Musk early on Monday morning to hammer out additional details.
-Twitter announces that it has accepted Musk’s offer to acquire the publicly traded company at $54.20/share, valuing the social media platform at $44 billion.
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