Elon Musk hires Morgan Stanley, pushes to buy 100% Twitter shares
SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has offered to buy social media company Twitter for $41.4 billion. Mr Musk, worth about $259 billion, described the offer as “best and final.”
On Thursday, A regulatory filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission showed that Mr Musk was offering to acquire all the shares of Twitter for $54.20 each in cash.
“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,” Mr Musk wrote in the letter included in the filing. “My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”
Mr Musk proposes to make Twitter private, a move that would grant him greater control over the company, making him one of the most influential individuals in the world and have control and influence over conversations and journalism, including the crypto world using Twitter for trading.
He revealed that leading global investment bank Morgan Stanley was the financial adviser for the offer.
“…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,” Mr Musk said in the letter.
The move came after Mr Musk acquired a major stake in Twitter last month, buying nearly 73.5 million shares, worth about $2.89 billion. He was then appointed to join the company’s board of directors.
This move, however, was reversed as CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Mr Musk declined to join the board.
The value of Twitter shares soared over 13 per cent pre-market on the news, while Tesla shares dipped by 1.5 per cent.
Mr Musk, who has a following of 80 million people, has often criticised Twitter’s policies over targeted misinformation, calls for violence, harassment and conspiracy theories. He has often been accused of manipulating the markets using his tweets.
Last year, the cryptocurrency token Baby Doge hit a market cap of $1.7 billion after Mr Musk tweeted about it. Hacker group Anonymous also warned Mr Musk against posting disruptive messages that destabilise the crypto market on social media.
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