Elon Musk sought to reassure jittery advertisers that he has no plans to make Twitter a “free-for-all hellscape,” as Madison Avenue is reportedly uneasy about his plans to loosen content moderation rules once he takes control of the social network.
Silicon Valley moguls used to buy yachts and islands. Now they are rich enough, and perhaps arrogant enough, to acquire companies they fancy.
Two people familiar with the deal said Thursday night said that Elon Musk is in charge of the social media platform and has fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal and General Counsel Vijaya Gadde.
For a second time, Musk offered to buy the San Francisco company at $54.20. Twitter’s stock jumped nearly 13% to $47.93 Tuesday before trading stopped on the New York Stock Exchange, which listed “news pending” as the reason for the halt.
Twitter investors backed Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover that the billionaire is trying to abandon on the day a whistleblower who leveled charges of widespread security failures at the social-media company testified at a Senate hearing Tuesday. Former Twitter security executive Peiter Zatko, who was fired by the company in January, told the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday that Twitter executives’ “incentives led them to prioritize profits over security,” echoing his whistleblower complaint.
Exclusives
T-Mobile will partner with Elon Musk’s SpaceX and use the company’s Starlink satellites to provide mobile networks for cellphone users in remote areas, both companies announced at an event on Thursday.
Musk disclosed in series of regulatory filings that he unloaded about 8 million shares of his company Tesla Inc. in recent days. “In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk tweeted late Tuesday.
Twitter had asked for an expedited trial in September, while Musk’s team called for waiting until early next year because of the complexity of the case. Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the head judge of Delaware’s Court of Chancery, which handles many high-profile business disputes. said Musk’s team underestimated the Delaware court’s ability to “quickly process complex litigation.”
Twitter’s lawsuit opens with a sharply-worded accusation: “Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.” As part of the April deal, Musk and Twitter had agreed to pay each other a $1 billion breakup fee if either was responsible for the deal falling through. The company could have pushed Musk to pay the hefty fee but is going farther than that, trying to force him to complete the full $44 billion purchase approved by the company’s board.
Shares of the social media company have lost a third of their value since April 25, when Musk’s offer to buy the company was accepted by the company’s board.
The likely unraveling of the acquisition was just the latest twist in a saga between the world’s richest man and one of the most influential social media platforms, and it may portend a titanic legal battle ahead.
Shares of Twitter dipped in late trading Thursday, reversing earlier gains, on fresh speculation that its acquisition by Elon Musk is at risk. Musk inked a deal to buy the social media platform in late April for $54.20 a share, or $44 billion, and has indicated a number times he wants to back out, citing lack of clarity around the number of spam accounts.
Twitter’s board of directors on Tuesday unanimously recommended shareholders approve Elon Musk’s bid to buy the social media company. The board recommended stockholders approve Musk’s $44 billion offer, stating they determined it to be fair and in the best interests of Twitter and its stockholders, according to a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The billionaire is also likely to clarify some of his remarks on remote work and strategy at a virtual meeting Thursday with the social media platform’s employees.
After a weeks-long impasse, Twitter’s board plans to comply with Elon Musk’s demands for internal data by offering access to its full “firehose,” the massive stream of data comprising more than 500 million tweets posted each day, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the state of negotiations.
Lawyers for the Tesla and SpaceX CEO made the threat in a letter to Twitter dated Monday that the company disclosed in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The lawyers wrote that Musk has repeatedly asked for the information about Twitter’s spam bot and fake accounts since May 9, about a month after his offer to buy the company, so he could evaluate how many of the company’s 229 million accounts are fake.
Elon Musk’s bid to buy Twitter for $44 billion has cleared a regulatory step with the Federal Trade Commission, Twitter said Friday. The waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Improvements Act for the bid expired late Thursday night. The HSR Act requires parties to report large mergers and acquisitions to the FTC and the Department of Justice’s antitrust division for review. (AP photo/Richard Drew)
The Securities and Exchange Commission revealed on Friday that it had begun looking into Elon Musk’s purchases of Twitter stock in early April and whether he properly disclosed his stake and his intentions for the social media company.
Musk’s increasingly skeptical — and erratic — comments about the takeover have kept investors, bankers and Twitter itself guessing about his motives. Some analysts figure that the 50-year-old is trying to drive down the acquisition price or walk away from the deal altogether.
Elon Musk said he is putting his bid to acquire Twitter on hold, weeks after agreeing to take the company private in a $44 billion deal. “Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” Musk tweeted on Friday. The news sent Twitter shares down more than 20% in premarket trading.
Musk, speaking virtually at a Future of the Car summit hosted by the Financial Times, said Twitter’s Trump ban was a “morally bad decision” and “foolish in the extreme.” He said permanent bans of Twitter accounts should be rare and reserved for accounts that are scams or automated bots.
A filing lists a number of investment firms and other backers who will contribute $7 billion to the deal. In numerous conversations over the last several days, Musk began making promises about what he could do with Twitter, telling potential investors that he could double the number of users on the platform to more than half a billion by 2025, four people briefed on the conversations said. Not only that, he said, he could more than double Twitter’s revenue by that date and bring tens of millions of paying subscribers to the service, two of the people said.
Many marketers were already lukewarm on the service. Now, some may move their money elsewhere if the content moderation policies are relaxed.
Two of the FCC’s four current members have said they won’t interfere with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s planned $44 billion purchase of Twitter. “The FCC cannot, and should not, block this sale,” Nathan Simington, a Republican, said this week. “We should instead applaud Mr. Musk for doing something about a serious problem that government has so far failed to address,” Simington added, obviously referring to reports that Musk plans to revise Twitter’s content-moderation policies.
It’s highly unusual to move from a “poison pill” to a $44 billion deal in under two weeks. But Twitter’s board ran out of options.
Trevor Noah joked that owning Twitter would give Musk “more power than the drugstore employee with the key to the deodorant shelf.”
The big question now is how far Musk, who describes himself as a “free-speech absolutist,” wants to ratchet back these systems — and whether users and advertisers will stick around if he does.
Elon Musk Buys Twitter For $44B, Will Privatize Company
The outspoken Tesla CEO, the world’s wealthiest person, has said he wants to buy Twitter because he thinks it’s not living up to its potential as a platform for “free speech.” He says it needs to be transformed as a private company in order to build trust with users and do better at serving what he calls the “societal imperative” of free speech. Twitter said the transaction was unanimously approved by its board of directors.
The New York Times, citing people with knowledge of the situation who it did not identify, said the two sides were discussing details including a timeline and fees if an agreement was signed and then fell apart. The people said the situation was fluid and fast-moving.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Thursday in documents filed with U.S. securities regulators that the money would come from Morgan Stanley and other banks, some of it secured by his huge stake in the electric car maker. Twitter has yet to formally respond to Musk’s offer, but the company has enacted an anti-takeover measure known as a poison pill that could make a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive.
Apollo Global Management Inc. is considering participating in a bid for Twitter Inc., according to people familiar with the matter, after Elon Musk’s $43 billion bid put the social-media company in play. Apollo, one of the world’s largest buyout firms, has held discussions about backing a possible deal for Twitter and could provide Musk or another bidder like private-equity firm Thoma Bravo LP with equity or debt to support an offer, the people said.
The move would allow existing Twitter shareholders to buy additional shares at a discount, thereby diluting Elon Musk’s stake in the company and making it harder for the Tesla CEO to corral a majority of shareholder votes in favor of the acquisition. Twitter’s plan would take effect if Musk’s roughly 9% stake grows to 15% or more.
