{"id":21905,"date":"2022-04-25T18:37:17","date_gmt":"2022-04-25T22:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=21905"},"modified":"2022-04-25T18:37:22","modified_gmt":"2022-04-25T22:37:22","slug":"elon-musk-wins-twitter-accepts-buyout-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2022\/04\/25\/elon-musk-wins-twitter-accepts-buyout-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk wins Twitter accepts buyout deal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Twitter\u2019s board has accepted an offer from billionaire Elon Musk to buy the social media company and take it private, the company announced<\/a> Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The stock closed up 5.64% for the day after it was halted for the news.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFree speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,\u201d Musk said in a statement included in the press release announcing the $44 billion deal. \u201cI also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential \u2014 I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cash deal at $54.20 per share is valued at around $44 billion, according to the press release. Twitter would become a private company on completion of the deal, which requires shareholder and regulatory approval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The announcement ends a weekslong saga Musk kicked off when he disclosed a large stake in the company<\/a>. Soon after, the company said he would join the board<\/a>, only for Musk to reverse course on that plan several days later<\/a>. Then, he offered to buy the company<\/a> at $54.20 per share, his \u201cbest and final.\u201d That offer valued Twitter at about $43 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assuming the deal closes and Musk takes ownership of Twitter, the company will be controlled by the world\u2019s richest person and someone who\u2019s been a heavy critic of the platform while using it in legally contentious ways, mostly through sensitive posts about his car manufacturer, Tesla.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though Musk has indicated that his primary interest in Twitter has to do with what he views as the company\u2019s censorship of free speech, Musk critics are concerned that the billionaire\u2019s control over the platform will result in the silencing of their voices and others with whom he may disagree, given that he\u2019s often blocked critics from his personal account.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twitter\u2019s board sought to fend off a hostile takeover by adopting a so-called poison pill,<\/a> or shareholder rights agreement, that would allow other shareholders to buy the stock at a discount should Musk or another person or group acquire more than 15% of outstanding common stock. The plan would dilute that person\u2019s holdings in a strategy commonly employed to prevent unwanted acquisitions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The board seemed to have two reasons to consider rejecting the deal. The first was that the offer, while priced well above Twitter\u2019s current share price, was arguably too low given it had recently surged above that price tag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second was that it was initially unclear how Musk would fund the deal. Despite his being the world\u2019s richest person, much of his wealth is tied up in Tesla stock, meaning he would likely have to borrow against his holdings to fund the deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the offer became more concrete once Musk announced in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that he received commitments for $46.5 billion to help finance the potential deal<\/a>. That included about $25.5 billion in debt financing from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding and other firms. He said he committed about $21 billion in equity financing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk said in the same filing he was exploring a tender offer to purchase shares of Twitter directly from shareholders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musk\u2019s interest in Twitter comes from his own frequent use of the platform. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO often uses his large platform to share jokes, engage with his 83.6 million followers and make business announcements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Twitter\u2019s board has accepted an offer from billionaire Elon Musk to buy the social media company and take it private, the company announced Monday. The stock closed up 5.64% for the day after… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21906,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"0","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[2742],"class_list":["post-21905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-and-world-news","tag-elon-musk-wins-twitter-accepts-buyout-deal"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21905"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21905\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21906"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}