It’s Official! Elon Musk is all set to buy Twitter for $44 billon
The board of Twitter has agreed to a $44bn buyout offer from the billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk, who made the shocking bid less than two weeks ago, said Twitter had “tremendous potential” that he would unlock. He also called for a series of changes from relaxing its content restrictions to eradicating fake accounts.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in his announcement of the deal.
He further said “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” he added.
“Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
Musk’s targeting of Twitter has moved at remarkable speed. It emerged at the beginning of April that he had become the largest shareholder in the firm with a 9.2% stake.
Merely days later Musk shocked the tech and business world with his bid to buy out twitter for a price of $54.20 per share, which he claimed was his last and final offer. Later, on April 20th, Musk secured the required funds, revealing he would be investing up to $21bn of his own money and secure the rest from Morgan Stanley.
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Musk’s initial bid was refused by the Twitter board but once he announced that he had secured the funds for the deal, the board sat down with him for further negotiations. As per the reports of the Wall Street Journal, on 22nd April, 2022, Friday morning, Musk had a private meeting with the company shareholders regarding the virtues of his proposal. He also made video calls to push his offer to the company.
Musk has been a steadfast promoter of free speech on Twitter for a long time. Musk previously said, “I believe in the potential of Twitter and it is the best platform for free speech around the world, that’s what attracted me to invest in it. I will unlock the highest features of Twitter as it has extraordinary potential in it.
At the time of bidding on Twitter, he said he will defeat all spambots on Twitter and make it authenticated for all human beings. He already made a mastered plan to takeover Twitter privately.
In the mid-April, Musk tweeted a poll by asking the audience about an Edit Button on the platform, where the options were yes or no and most of the users answered Yes, which is highlighting that an edit button can be useful for the users to edit their tweets after posting.
Post that Twitter made a confirmation that it will introduce the edit button shortly.
With Musk owning the company will also mean he will have the freedom to make any and all changes he wishes to in the company, which will include making posts longer and the ability to edit published posts. As a part of the takeover, Twitter’s shares are also to be delisted and the company is supposed to be taken private and by taking the company private Musk will exercise total control over Twitter.
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On Monday, 25th April 2022, Twitter shares closed at 5% higher post the announcement of the deal. However, the price still remains lower than Musk’s $54.20 per share offer, a sign that he may be overpaying for the company. But Musk has said that he doesn’t care about the economics of the purchase.
Bret Taylor, chair of Twitter’s board, said it had fully assessed Mr Elon Musk’s offer and it was “the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders”.
It is still not clear who will lead the company moving forward. Twitter is currently led by Parag Agrawal, who took over from co-founder and former boss Jack Dorsey last November. But Musk has claimed to not have ‘confidence’ in the current management.
So, Elon Musk is now the absolute monarch of Twitter. The only immediate danger that Twitter now faces is that unfiltered free speech on social media can become very ugly and very vicious at an alarming rate.
Very informative. Love to see more blogs like this