Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share this morning, a total of $43bn (£33bn). The Telegraph has the story.
It comes the week after the Chief Executive of SpaceX and Tesla emerged as Twitter’s biggest shareholder and days after he ditched plans to join the company’s board, which would have capped his shareholding and prevented a takeover.
In a letter to the Twitter chairman, Bret Taylor, Mr Musk wrote: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.
“However, since making my investment I now realise the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.
“As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.
“Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”
In a previous text message to Mr Taylor, published on Twitter, he wrote: “As I indicated this weekend, I believe that the company should be private to go through the changes that need to be made. After the past several days of thinking this over, I have decided I want to acquire the company and take it private.”
He’s clearly had enough of the internet’s public square banning people for not being woke or on-message enough. Will his takeover succeed?
Worth reading in full.
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He certainly believes in free speech, vide his delight in accusing an innocent man, a hero indeed, of being a paedophile. Oh well.
I don’t know much about the incident to which you refer. You may well be right. However, free speech has so few powerful allies that I think we have to accept whatever help we can get. Let’s face it, Twitter can’t get much worse.
I don’t know who holds most of the shares, but I imagine many of the major shareholders will be inclined not to sell to Musk at any price, because they want Twitter to continue its propaganda mission.
Vern Unsworth. Research it, Julian. Then look at Larry Fossi (Montana Skeptic on SeekingAlpha). Musk is a nasty crook and would turn Twitter into an even more disgusting place to further his own agendas.
Larry Fossi: “One of Tesla’s biggest anonymous trolls/shorts has been doxxed as an investment manager heavily invested in the oil industry.
He has now deleted his Twitter account, which he used to promote his blog posts about Tesla and attack anyone saying anything that could be perceived as positive on Tesla, after Tesla CEO Elon Musk reportedly called his boss to complain about his behavior.
We are talking about ‘Montana Skeptic’ who has been using Seeking Alpha, a financial blog aggregator, and Twitter to push the bear case on Tesla for the past 3 years.
Hiding behind his anonymous persona on social media, Montana Skeptic went beyond just pushing the bear case.
He also used the platforms to send insults and attacks to Tesla bulls, bloggers, YouTubers, and reporters discussing anything that he saw as potentially being positive for Tesla, including myself on numerous occasions to the point where I had to block him.
To his credit, he disclosed that he was holding a short position on Tesla and therefore, he benefits from the company’s stock price going down. “
Don’t attack Montana until you have read his work.
I’m quoting a news report. Your examples aren’t very credible, unless you can give more information.
He shorted Tesla stock. Judging by most peoples opinions of those who short stock, they are corporate raiders who deliberately seek to destroy businesses to profit from that destruction.
Musk isn’t supposed to retaliate?
His retaliation should involve getting criminal charges brought against those shorting stock.
Calling someone a paedophile for shorting your stock isn’t acceptable.
BBC: “Elon Musk did not defame a British caver who helped in last year’s rescue of trapped Thai schoolboys by calling him a “pedo guy”, a US jury has found.
Vernon Unsworth sought $190m (£145m) in damages from the Tesla founder, arguing that the tweet damaged his reputation.
A public row broke out between the two men over the rescue of 12 boys trapped in a Thai cave in June 2018.
Mr Musk told the court this week the phrase “pedo guy” was common in South Africa, where he grew up. “
The lawyer acting for Vern was bought. Plain as a pikestaff
Lin Wood? Don’t know. Or are you suggesting the judge was also bought off? It’s not plain to me.
I’m happy to take that at face value because they’re just whores, and will always service the richest client.
What reputation did Unsworth have that’s worth £145m?
Exactly.
If I was Musk, I also would’ve wanted to bury this muppet for being such a twat about the damages.
Where I grew up, “sicko child-abusing vermin who ought to have his child taken into care by social services” was the common term for a person like Elon Musk who is having his son raised to “choose” his own “gender”.
I knew a few Tom boys when I was young in the 60’s/70’s. My wife and I brought our two girls up to play with what toys they wanted and wear pretty much what they wanted. We didn’t force ‘Barbie’ on them but they preferred her to ‘Action Man’.
Their ‘gender stereotype’ was more induced at primary school whilst mixing with their peers. And to be fair to the school, the limited uniforms they had were the same between boys and girls, trousers, sweatshirts and polo shirts.
We did, however, instruct them on the fundamental differences between the sexes as regards functional bits. However, suggest to either of them they are inferior to men and you will soon find they aren’t. On the question of physical strength they will quickly point out that no man has the physical ability to squeeze out an 8lb baby, never mind do it better than them.
Are you sure Musk and his wife are doing any more than me and my wife? I mean, this is a Forbes article and they form part of the MSM most people on this blog object to so vehemently.
Seems to me that the crook was Fossi, who was trying to drive down the Tesla price to profit from the fall, ie, shorting the company stock price.
it was very unfortunate to use the term “pedo-guy” and a severe misjudgement, as it’s not a widely understood insult outside SA, but a serious accusation. Nonetheless, Musk won his court case.
I did know enough about Musk to say much more, but I fail to see where your assertion he’d make Twitter much worse comes from. At the moment, it’s very heavily biased against conservatives, having recently banned Babylon Bee “for transgender hate” for referring to the US woman of the year having lived for 53 years as a man and a father to four children; plus Tucker Carlson, among others.
it allows threats of violence and race hatred as long as it’s from one side of the political divide. I hope he does buy it out, or that it disappears altogether. If it can’t allow both sides of any debate, it’s not worth having at all.
Musk is doing it for profit, make no mistake, which is probably the most honourable reason to do almost anything.
By freeing Twitter from censorship, he releases it to a bigger audience and therefore more profit. As a bonus, it secures free speech on a global platform hitherto dominated and restricted by left wing zealots.
Seems like you’re holding a grudge for personal reasons.
You couldn’t be that irrational about Musk if you were objective.
The large shareholders are the usual suspects; Vanguard, Blackrock etc. Anyone know if his offer would be considered good?
If it’s a good one and they don’t sell what is thought to be a stagnating platform it’s telling.
Just stop using Twitter. Completely ignore it. Its revenue is totally traffic-dependent.
If traffic crashes below 100 million distinct people, it will become an irrelevance financially.
Musk’s defence that he didn’t know that calling Vern Unsworth a “pedo” – in the context of Mr Unsworth’s welcome and successful effort to save the lives of some boys who were trapped in a cave – would be interpreted as calling him a paedophile was absolutely taking the p*ss.
Seriously how can anyone respect such a person?
It was reminiscent of when Greek footballer Giorgos Katidis gave a fascist salute and then claimed he didn’t know what it meant.
Childish and spiteful, but hardly a big deal. I called people bastards when I was a kid long ago. Very hurtful considering the implications. I might have called them paedo but I didn’t know there was such a thing then. As an adult, and after a nasty spat on FB over the 2014 Sottish referendum I rashly called an SNP zealot a cunt. Very juvenile, and I regretted it, but didn’t apologise or withdraw it.
I have known a few South Africans over the years and they are, by nature, blunt and outspoken people who have no time for delicate, woke niceties. They can also take as good as they give.
Storm in a teacup.
Why go all Will Smith?
So fucking what if Musk made a petulant, throwaway comment after he was snubbed?
Accusing a man of being paedophile…?
If you think that’s what Musk did then you should work for the mainstream media.
Emotive garbage.
Gosh this interesting . It depends if he is part of the global cabal and it is a handshake behind closed doors with long term plans. This would for the short term help Twitter masquerade for a while as fee speech platform until everyone realised it was a ruse.
OR he really is a genuine free speech, legal democracy advocate in which case the global elites on the demonic cult have plenty of combined money to try block his desired purchase.
Watching with interest and hope he is a ‘goody’ who wins but I don’t have enough evidence or knowledge to call it!!
fingers crossed though
Are bears Catholics? Does the P… (nah, better not)?
It would be a shame. As screwed as Twitter is, Musk will only make it worse. He is not for free speech. He denounces anyone who points out his crimes (Larry Fossi, Vern Unsworth, Martin Tripp et al) in the most disgusting and destructive ways.
Hard to see how it could get much worse. Let’s say he ruthless bans any criticism of him personally, and of his firms, but allows EVERYTHING else to go through unchanged. IMO the world would still be a way better place.
Oh, it can get worse. A lot worse.
Who can say for sure, but what exactly would you predict?
Conservatives are functionally banned from Twitter. So what’s he going to do, ban the left?
Anyone who tortures and kills monkeys simply to indulge childhood transhumanist fantasies needs to be imprisoned or sectioned imho.
“Lockdowns are fascist”; supporting the Canadian truckers.
Seems like a pretty good fucking start to me.
Let it go, it’s only money.
I doubt he’ll buy Twitter. I doubt anyone would lend him money. And he won’t be able to buy up other people’s shareholdings using Ponzi funny-coin either.
He probably wants out and is trying to ramp up the share price first. He’s a known fraudster where telling lies about plans to take a company private is concerned. That’s exactly what he got fined by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for in 2018.
His takeover of Twitter isn’t going to happen.
The guy has “I’m going to keep on making headlines until I go to jail” written all over him.
That is an interesting point. I’d assume his bid is really in the form of a stock swap, rather than cash.
Well, the bright side is that the only people getting scalped are other Twatter speculators.
He settled the SEC dispute. He was not convicted of anything.
I take no sides, but you have a special kind of spite for him.
He paid $11 Billion in TAXES after selling Tesla stock, I’m pretty sure he can afford it.
Nope, he’s not a known fraudster.
Stop being silly.
The Twitter board told Musk he could do one – probably after due-diligence checks – and now he’s having a tantrum.
Musk has just told the Twitter board to do one, and he’s holding the cards. Most of them are paid in stock options, in other words, they get loadsa money if the value of the stock hits a target. If it doesn’t, they don’t get paid.
If Musk sells his 10% the stock price will crash, ergo they don’t get paid and he can pick the company up for a song anyway.
Whatever anyone thinks of Musk it’s pretty much impossible for him to makes things any worse (unless he starts hiring assassins to target anyone that’s not playing the Who Can Be the Biggest Virtue Signalling Woke Tosser game). Anyway, this looks to me just to be a shot across the bows, rather than serious intention. We’ll see.
He says free speech is a societal imperative.
Could be he believes that. Better than Twitter in its current unpalatable guise.
But the idea that Twitter cannot be bettered? Just start over Elon. Make something new. If you build it they will come. Maybe.
Why reinvent the wheel?
There’s an American path to glory called fake it til you make it. We are too jaded here for that. It’s a good plan though if you can build on it. But we are moving into a time where a man’s integrity will be his currency and thus we will find out where we really stand with people. Just don’t hunger for something and then feel sated and rested if your hunger is assuaged. So many do, human all to human but be aware that the warfare is multidimensional and relentless.
Hopefully he is true to his word and free speech is reborn, because it certainly isn’t allowed even on this forum.
If anyone thinks that free speech is coming back then they are missing the point. The constraints of the control system mean that free speech rules can never be relaxed but only tightened. There might be cosmetic attempts or faux advocates but if you look at the economics then you will no for sure that free speech is going to be further diminished. Although I did hear quite a wise economic commentator say that we have two weeks left at most in terms of the integrity of the international system. When it goes down then all of of this chatter will count for nothing. Just cold stark reality and most of us with nary a pot to piss in nor a titty to suck on. There really won’t be any help from the state when the collapse occurs. Free speech will seem like a trifle when you are barbecuing your neighbour.
Musk is playing with Twitter to make profit. Nothing wrong with that.
The means to profit from Twitter is to attract more users. That’s easy, simply lift the censorship restrictions and Conservatives all head back, if for nothing other than to take revenge on the left.
Bonuses are, the covered up stories of covid, Ukraine, Hunters laptop etc. get out into the public square. Nowhere for the MSM to hide then.
They’re poisoning you. Don’t let yourself be beguiled by some silly clot like this one just because you hunger for escape. There isn’t going to be any return to a world of ethics and morality. The only way for us now is descent into the fire and the faith that something might come out the other end.
Boris and the Tories are globalists committed to destroying the UK with mass immigration so this Rwanda thing will be a con.
My money is on the system being set up so that any African that rocks up to Rwanda will be able to claim asylum in the UK from there, this will make it much much easier for Africans to get into the UK as they won’t have to travel across the Sahara, the med across Europe and then the Channel.
For the Tories it will be good because the bad optics of the boat people will be gone, instead the Tories will be flying in two or three jumbo jets worth od asylum seekers each day.
Most people seem to forget that we get between 250 000 and 300 000 legal immigrants rocking up on top of all these illegals and absolutely chuff all is going to be done about that.
“African American buys major comms business”
Surely no one can complain about that…….
People should just stop using twatter, facebook and Youtube, these social media outlets are globalist s##t shows.
There are viable alternatives.
You can tell if a service is committed to free speech by seeing if any presentations or discussions debunking the holocaust are allowed.
The trouble with that is that you end up talking in an echo chamber of like minded people. What we really need are mainstream platforms used by everyone that do not censor, nudge or campaign.
I like talking to like minded people who value freedom of thought and expression.
There is little point in trying to converse with pro censorship people.
I used to try and converse with people at the Guardian because I wanted to try to understand how those f##kwits saw the world.
Genrally I would not be able to make more than three or four comments before I was blocked.
I understand, yes indeed, but in my ideal world no-one would be able to “block” you – at least not on mass usage platforms like Twitter.
You need to be able to block the idiots and deliberate troublemakers. Assuming you are making sensible, well considered point when you get blocked, you know you have won the debate.
100%!
I find this and many other blogs frustrating because there is no reasonable opposition. I quite like hearing other people’s views.
Just understand that we are moving into serious times. And we hope that it brings out the best in us. Because not to do so will make you feel less worthy of survival when it all goes down.
We are talking in a few weeks time. The whole shebang won’t make any sense. The amount of energy that you might expend going to work at the office doesn’t equal your monthly ration of half a loaf of stale bread. This isn’t crazy town this is coming. At that point you need to have some awareness. Just make the effort to look after the people around you. This will be the only option.
Nurse Ratched will be with you shortly.
Whilst we are all here reading about the Internet. Have you read this?
DuckDuckGo Announces Purge of Independent Media – “Only MSM Allowed”So time to stop using them too them.
https://newspunch.com/google-lite-duckduckgo-announces-purge-of-independent-media-only-msm-allowed/
The platform is a cesspool, all it encourages is short sniping sensationalist attempts at one-upmanship and signalling for virtue points. We would all be better off if he left it to die as it had been doing for the last while since they banned Trump.
What is he really doing?
Never, used Twitter, never will. Same goes for FB, I deleted my account during the lead up to the Brexit referendum because of the amount of hate and bile that was being posted. Free of (anti) social media is a good place to be.
The act of taking Twitter private is alarming in itself if that was to happen. Having one of the world’s most popular social media platforms in the hands of one man, a man who has other shadowy agendas (neuralink, 5G satellites), doesn’t sound like a good idea to me. He talks about free speech but remember this is a multi-billionaire who likes to be seen as one of the gang. I, for one, don’t trust him or his motives. I don’t use Twitter either.
I am afraid that I do not believe Elon Musk is a goody! At best, he is controlled opposition; at worst, as evil as the rest of them.
The people who are most upset about this are people who want more censorship.
They believe it’s their right to not see or hear things that upset them, but worse than that they don’t want anybody else to see or hear it either.
They believe that a less restrictive Twitter will force them to confront things they’ve been hiding away from. They can’t just ignore it because even if they did it kills them inside knowing that somebody else is seeing it, or heaven forbid thinking and saying it.
Elon Musk is not a man of the people.