Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk recently bought 9.2% of the Twitter share, increasing its valuation by 27% in the following days and making him the largest individual shareholder in the social media company. Shortly after the announcement of Musk’s investment in Twitter, CEO Parag Agrawal announced that he was also added to the company’s board of directors – before turning around after a week of strange tweets from Musk.
Now Musk has announced that he intends to buy the company directly: and says he would pay $ 54.20 per share. share for Twitter (thank you, BBC). Musk added that if the offer was not accepted, “I will have to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”
Musk has described himself as “a freedom of speech absolutist” previously, and in an application to the US Financial Supervisory Authority says: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for freedom of expression across the globe and I believe that freedom of expression is a societal necessity for a functioning democracy.
“But since I made my investment, I now realize that the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.
As a result, I’m offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $ 54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I started investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. Offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted I have to reconsider my position as a shareholder.
“Twitter has extraordinary potential. I want to unlock it.”
The deal will value the social media company at $ 43.4 billion.
Well, this one is definitely going to run and run. It seems that Twitter employees may not be so happy after all, so how it’s going to shake out is anyone’s guess.