Why Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter
Tesla CEO, Elon Musk has been a top trend all round the media following the purchase of 9.2 percent stake in Twitter and consideration to join the Board of Directors of the Microblogging platform.
The Tesla Boss is now out with an offer to purchase the full ownership of the platform at $54.20 per share at a bid of $43 billion.
However, there hasn’t been any official response by the Twitter team regarding the offer but Musk has said that the offer is his best and final and would reconsider being a shareholder in the company if the offer is not met.
Why is Musk keen on Twitter
Musk in a recent securities filing, disclosed that his belief that free speech is a symbol of democracy which should be granted to all informed his decision to privatise the platform.
“I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy. I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form,” Musk said.
He explained that there should be a general perception in the reality of free speech which should be granted to all.
“I’m not saying I have all the answers here, but I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things and just be very cautious with permanent bans,” Musk said. “It won’t be perfect,” he said, but there should be a perception and reality that speech is “as free as reasonably possible.”
Musk says that Twitter must go private in order to undergo the changes that need to be made. These according to him include an edit feature, an open-source algorithm, less moderation, and a higher bar for removing offending tweets.
While granting interviews at the TED 2022 conference, he elaborated that having a people’s platform that is widely free and trusted is crucial for civilization.
“My strong, intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization but I don’t care about the economics at all,” he said.
He stated that twitter should be in accordance with the laws guiding the country and tweets are meant to stay.
“Twitter should match the laws of the country,” said Musk at the TED conference on Thursday, then later said, “If it’s a gray area, I would say let the tweet exist.”
Twitter ‘s poison pill defense
Meanwhile, Twitter deployed a so-called ‘poison pill’ plan on Friday to try to stave off Musk’s takeover attempt
This plan according to twitter is called a shareholders right plan which would allow shareholders other than Musk to buy additional stock at a discounted price, flooding the market with shares that would then trade at a premium. That would make it difficult for Musk, who already owns more than 9 percent of the company, to get a much higher stake without spending a lot more money.
The poison pill according to experts only goes into effect if Musk takes more than a 15 percent stake in the company.
Experts told The Washington Post that the plan makes it so that Musk will need to either persuade the board to drop the pill provision, or negotiate with them.
The billionaire has been a vocal critic of Twitter, mostly over his stated belief that it falls short on free-speech principles and has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist”.
Musk has more than 81 million followers on the microblogging platform and has always been active on the social space
Meanwhile, Twitter shares closed at $45.08, down just under 2 percent, well below Musk’s offer of $54.20 per share. That’s generally a sign that some investors doubt the deal will go through and the stock remains down from its 52-week high of about $73.
