Current shareholders will receive $54.20 per share for their shares. The chairman of the board says that Musk’s plans have been carefully examined, “with a focus on values, security and financing.”
Takeover soap
Earlier this month, it was announced that Musk had almost 40 billion euros left to buy all of Twitter’s shares. This year he has already purchased 9 percent of the shares, making him the largest shareholder. That’s how the soap started. The top of the company initially offered the boss of Tesla, also the richest man on earth, a place on the board of directors, but Musk gave up on that a little later.
Later still, he stated plainly that Twitter only has a future with a new management, after which CEO Parag Agrawal took cum suis measures to make the takeover more difficult with the use of a so-called poison pill. Once Musk’s stock grows to about 15 percent or more without consulting the board, Twitter will issue new shares to dilute his stake. This doesn’t make it impossible, but it does make it more difficult for one person to take over Twitter.
Plan
Over the past few days, the takeover battle suddenly took a different turn. Musk would have met other shareholders to gather support for his offer. A number of them reached out to Twitter after a presentation of Musk’s plans, to emphasize that the company should not miss this opportunity.
Musk’s exact plans are still unclear, but in a short statement Monday evening he lifts a corner of the veil. “Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are discussed,” the new owner said. Musk has emphasized time and again in the past that Twitter should be a platform where everyone should be able to say anything. That could also mean that the suspended Donald Trump could return and that the platform will become less strict with moderation. Recently, Geert Wilders had to deal with a (temporary) suspension in the Netherlands.
Musk has also repeatedly said that Twitter has a lot of potential, but that the possibilities are not being used right now. He says he can. His main intention is to make Twitter’s algorithms ‘open source’. Users and developers can then tinker with Twitter themselves.
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) Apr 25, 2022
Twitter in a few highlights:
2006: Founded by Obvious Corp, a San Francisco company, including Jack Dorsey. In March he published his first message: ‘just setting up my twttr’. Back then only 140 characters, later that became more.
2007: ‘Microblog’ Twitter is the hit during the influential South by Southwest conference in Austin and is quickly picked up, also in the Netherlands
2009: ‘Twitter’ became word of the year in the Netherlands
2011: Twitter reaches the milestone of 100 million active users, of which 1 million in the Netherlands
2018: Twitter turns a profit for the first time
2021: After the storming of the Capitol, Twitter bans former President Trump from the platform