There is still doubt if Elon Musk really does want to purchase the Twitter social media platform. However, Musk himself seems to be putting a lot of his own credibility on the line as he announces the construct of his $46 billion purchase proposal.
It looks like Musk has created a second alternative to the purchase if the Twitter board of directors refuses the original offer. Within the secondary construct, a tender offer, Musk would be able to bypass the board and go directly to shareholders.
(YAHOO) – Elon Musk has secured commitments for $46.5bn (£35.5bn) that would allow him to bypass Twitter’s (TWTR) board and go directly to the social media company’s shareholders with his takeover bid.
Musk said he would personally provide $21bn of equity for the deal with another $12.5bn coming from margin loans, according to paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday.
Banks, including Morgan Stanley, have agreed to provide another $13bn in debt secured against Twitter itself, according to the filing.
Musk has not yet determined if he will make a tender offer for Twitter or whether he will take other steps to further the proposal, the filing states.
Tender offers involve making a bid to purchase some or all shares of a company directly from its shareholders. (read more)
There are two ways to buy a publicly traded company. The simplest and most common is a board-approved merger. Talks start in secret, the two sides haggle and then arrive at a deal. Shareholders get to vote, and it is an all-or-nothing affair. Typically with a simple majority, the buyer walks away with the entire company. If the vote fails, the buyer goes away empty-handed.
A tender offer instead makes a direct appeal to shareholders to sell—or tender—their shares at a specific price. It can be used in friendly deals, but its real value is to hostile bidders when the target company’s board won’t engage. Tender offers simply go around them.
And they aren’t all or nothing. A buyer can bid for, say, just enough shares to cross 50%, thus seizing control. From there it could replace intransigent board members with friendlier ones, though in practice, it rarely gets that far. If a tender offer looks likely to succeed, reluctant boards tend to capitulate and negotiate a deal.
Mr. Musk would, with some regulatory paperwork, announce the offer at a specific price. The offer has to remain on the table for at least 20 days.
Those documents would lay out the number of shares he is soliciting. If Mr. Musk, who owns more than 9% of Twitter, takes a bare-bones approach, he would seek another 41% or so.
Meanwhile, Twitter would have 10 days to make its own recommendation to shareholders regarding the tender offer—in this case, presumably that it doesn’t accept it.
If not enough shares are tendered, Mr. Musk could cancel the offer or amend the terms.
The New York Post has details on the ideological opposition:
[…] “After backing out of an agreement to take a seat on the board, Musk is threatening to cut board salaries to zero, a move he says will save the company nearly $3 million a year. Each non-employee board member earned $225,000 in stock in 2021, according to Twitter’s public filings. Directors, with the exception of Dorsey and his co-founder, CEO Parang Agrawal, also received $12,500 in cash, plus extra fees, ranging from $2,500 to $7,500, for serving on various board committees.
So who are these Twitter board members fighting Musk’s hostile bid? Twitter — which has come under fire for censorship, in part for banning the New York Post’s coverage of Hunter Biden’s laptop — is filled with a motley mix of tech vets, retail gurus, academics, philanthropists and former government officials.” (read more)
Do you remember that weird dynamic when President Trump was dealing with North Korea and Kim Jong-un while at the same time having to pretend publicly that Beijing (Chairman Xi Jinping) wasn’t in control of Chairman Kim? There are some similarities here with Elon Musk.
Musk likely has some of the best tech people in the world working for him and advising him. He has to know that Twitter is only operationally viable insofar as the twitter simultaneous user processing systems remain on the backbone of U.S. government big data architecture. Twitter most definitely is not financially stable as a business without govt data-processing subsidy; it’s just too costly and the Twitter service is free for most users.
If you accept that Musk is well aware of the cost issue, then he has to have some plan to deal with it – via at least a vision down the road where Twitter is financially viable – or, he’s going to end up needing the same data processing subsidy from the govt, which would inevitably maintain the same ideological underpinning he is trying to remove.
Assuming Musk is legit in his motives, his only leverage in this game of pretend and conquest, is knowing both the provider (govt) and recipient of the subsidy (Jack) do not want the full scope of the public-private partnership exposed.
I have no idea how this is going to end, but we can all see the Deep State is going bananas.
How does the “poison pill” affect the tender offer?
The Board takes a cyanide pill and a glass of Stoli.
Cyanide from China and Russian Stoli? The irony is strong in this one.
The tender offer bypasses the poison pill by not triggering the ownership threshold. Then, once Musk and allies control the majority of shares they can simply fire the board and appoint a new one that rescinds the poison pill.
I wonder if he intends to develop a version of the Dojo computer (Tesla-designed, fifth-fastest supercomputer in the world) specifically designed around the user interaction server requirements?
I think he intends to discover a crap-ton of secrets and that’s what they simply cannot allow.
Brilliant assessment!
There has to be some secret sauce there that Musk wants for his systems.
Let’s suppose the US government refuses to sell twitter to Musk, even with a hostile bid. Admitting to the public, Twitter is a US front for the IC. Just like Google.
I can hardly wait.
I’m not convinced people will care that the CIA controls Twitter. Most people likely already assume the government reads their mail and adds them to various “lists”.
After 2-years of people excitedly, happily, enthusiastically, letting themselves be molested by their government, you can bet there’s a core of 30-40% of Americans who not only don’t mind…they view it as a weapon they can target at their enemies.
They’re the people who smugly say “I’m not doing anything wrong-what do I care if someone at the NSA is reading my text messages” They’ve already accepted they’re always going to mold their opinions to the official government position. They’ll be the ones with the big sad eyes when the government position is half a loaf of bread every other day.
Disagree. An overwhelming majority of Americans would be shocked and disgusted to learn that the Federal government controls a company that holds itself out as a private entity.
Plus, it would be censorship not fact checking.
obama showing his lousy face means he see’s the threat.
Keep a eye on DeSantis lawsuit against Twitter
Who do you think is truly behind the massive leftist bot networks? wink…. wink.
Throw in the vastly inflated Yourube “views” for any and all things
media that supports the narrative. Latest example was this.
Must apologize in advance, because I forgot WHAT in particular it
pertained to. But, it was the usual flavor the of month talking points
outrage. The clip from the networks was all of 10 hours old, and already
had 1.7 million views. Particularly damning in this instance? It was
one of the further down the line outrages, not the top of the heap, go
after people’s livelyhood ones.
Like Trump before him, Musk is exposing much just by his purchase when it was initially disclosed and reported. Where this will end is anyone’s guess but, it sure is fun watching the deep state go bananas and continue exposing its supporters.
Putin and Musk sure are putting the squeeze on the Fourth Branch.
Ability to hold the US government accountable for damages when its found that twitter is just a propoganda arm of the government? Triple one’s investment with damages in 12-36 months would be a nice return.
“Banks, including Morgan Stanley”
Something tells me the DOJ/SEC and other leftists will not have such an easy time saying Morgan Stanley is a nut.
The mention of a bank being involved is the biggest puzzle.
When we know the international bankers together with 5 eyes control everything, for one of them to break ranks tells me there is more to Mr Musk and his play than meets the eye.
We do live in interesting times.
I am praying for Elon Musk.
The Deep State wont take this lightly
Yes the electric god is big on free speech!!! Tesla sues man for $650k in defamation lawsuit after he won $150k from automakerAmerican electric car company Tesla has decided to sue a Chinese man for $650,000, claiming defamation following his victory against the automaker in a separate lawsuit, where he won $155,000.
Han Chao has posted images of legal documents that indicate Tesla is suing him for 5.05 million yuan, or around $650,000 for defamation. Tesla is also demanding a public apology, a strategy it has used in other defamation suits in China, where the company has been undergoing a very public attack on its products since the beginning of 2021.
The lawsuit’s basis seems to indicate that, following the closure of a previous case that saw Chao win more than 1 million yuan or around $155,00 from Tesla, Chao continued to defame the automaker on social media. Chao used terms such as “a quack,” calling Tesla a “rogue” and “rubbish” company following his victory.
Elon Musk is autistic, and autists, well, we don’t think the same way normal people do. His motives may be entirely non-political. Boredom. A knee-jerk reaction to being told what to do. Poking the Deep State for the fun of it. Curiosity; can he make it viable without the government? The satisfaction of wresting it away from those he deems are misusing it. Revenge for a personal slight from Jack Dorsey.
It could be anything. It is not necessarily anything that it appears to be.
Someone mentioned that he was a huge fan of the Babylon Bee and their suspension may have triggered this… 🤷♀️
I think he did a long interview with them.
He did. They did an altar call at the end. Must see TV.
Yeah, and it was pretty cringy. Giving an altar call to someone who knows next to nothing about the Gospel and didn’t even make an inclination that he recognized he was a sinner was bad form on their part. Elon Musk is not a believer in any sense. The man has seriously mused that human are likely living in a simulated experience so someone with that mindset doesn’t really measure their actions in good or evil. His only goal in life is not getting bored.
Musk is autistic and his thought process is not traditional. So because he doesn’t demonstrate knowledge of the gospel he doesn’t “deserve” an altar call??? Only in your eyes sir, not God’s. I suggest you study up on the different spectrums of autism before passing judgement. Mr. Musk does demonstrate he’s on the genius end of the spectrum.
Musk didn’t decide to do this on a whim. Twitter suspending the Babylon Bee was just the last straw. The Bee is a genuinely funny and inoffensive outlet. There was absolutely no justification for their suspension, outside of the Woke Inquisition that has run amok and ruined nearly everything.
Last night I watched the film “The Accountant”
I’m not a big fan of Ben Affleck but he was serviceable in the role
The film portrayed him as a mathematically gifted autist, and some of the autistic characteristics they presented seemed reasonable and consistent with your description
Yes! A gun-toting accountant! Its what i became when i grew up. But err not exactly like that lol
I haven’t seen it, I tend to not watch many movies. Perhaps now I will.
My favorite portrayal of autism that I’ve seen is Sheldon from Big Bang Theory. He has a rather extreme version and comes off cold and almost sociopathic, but he does legitimately care about his friends – he’s just very, very bad at showing it. I believe whoever wrote the character must have been autistic as well, or was close to someone who was, because they portrayed it very well.
It was someone close to an autist, since they have trouble seeing their own “issues.”
Good movie.
In Defense of Elon Musk’s Managerial Excellence
The Tesla CEO’s track record proves he’s a pre-eminent builder of businesses and maximizer of shareholder value.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-04-18/elon-musk-in-defense-of-the-tesla-ceo-s-managerial-excellence
Tesla Uses Engineering Samples for the Modem in All the New Model S, 3, and Y Units
To defend the lousy quality control of Tesla cars, one of its advocates once wrote that the company sold prototypes, not production vehicles. While that is true regarding software – especially Autopilot and FSD – the cars should not be regarded as such. A recent discovery may give that Tesla advocate reason: the company is shipping cars with modem engineering samples.
According to GreenTheOnly – a white-hat hacker that has studied Tesla products and software for years – all units of the Model S Plaid and all Model 3s and Model Ys with AMD chips come with modem chips that read “engineering sample.” The hacker was told that this was a way to include radio equipment that has not yet passed the necessary FCC certification in production vehicles.
That opens a broad discussion if production vehicles can come with engineering samples. Apparently, the Quectel AG525R-GL modem chip was approved by the FCC in October 2020, making it legal to use production versions of the chip in Tesla vehicles. However, GreenTheOnly said that all cars he and his colleagues have checked so far come with engineering samples.
Your electric god is a cheat.
If they allow this is Elon a white hat or a black hat? Since twitter is intelligence right?
What if we all pitch in $$$ to Elon to push that pot higher. Yes they’d get more money, but we’d get free speech. ???
Maybe he has obtained Nikola Tesla’s notebook..
Tesla purportedly had harnessed the ‘power in the air’.. free energy from the magnetic field surrounding the planet..
or maybe he has made a deal with another country..
..or maybe both..
in the 1950’s.. Russia had complete access to the Tesla Archives in Yugoslavia..
I haven’t been able to figure out how he did it.. I’ve been waiting for this one for a long time..
in college I “solved” a problem of extended space travel in one of my research papers.. so that astronauts wouldn’t be torn apart atom by atom..
..simple..
Earth’s orbital speed through our solar system is approximately 67,000 m.p.h.. and we are not being torn apart atom by atom..
hmm..
create a “rotating” craft with a device that simultaneously creates a gyroscopic “electromagnetic field” around it.. mimicing the parameters surrounding planet Earth..
..simple..
I got the idea from a Houston Astros logo I saw on a car while going home from one of my U of H science classes..
Texian: You mentioning this brought something else to mind.
If MRI imaging was an offshoot from Tesla’s theories. When I first heard
how MRI imaging worked, I was dumbfounded. Like the machine rearranged
your body’s molecules, froze them in time, and took a snapshot.
Been a long time, and it’s a vast simplification, but that just came to mind.
A big concern I have about Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter is his desire to end anonymity on the platform. You can see that in the second tweet above “authenticate all humans”.
Anonymity is essential to free speech. It allows people to express themselves freely without fear of retribution. Just look at what happened to the woman who run the Libs-of-Tik-Tok tweeter account. After she was doxed the mob went after her and her family.
If Musk succeeds in acquiring twitter I really hope someone is able to change his mind on anonymity because for a lot of people – if they have to use their real name in their account twitter will become useless.
I see the point, but the thing is if you wouldn’t say it under your real name and take full ownership, you probably shouldn’t say it at all.
On the other hand, mass reporting doxxing threats and intimidation SHOULD be a violation of the TOS, which should lead to suspending those toxic a-holes and kicking THEM off Twitter.
The problem is if you have what someone deems as an unpopular opinion (e.g. “there are two genders”) it could hinder your ability to get a job or keep your job if you were forced to use your real name. As it is people already share too much personal details on social media. How many people have had their lives ruined over something they posted on Facebook using their real name. I remember the early days of the internet when the cardinal rule was never share any personal information online. It’ a good rule for most people to follow unless of course they are famous (or trying to be famous) and using twitter to promote their themselves.
That sort of discrimination should be illegal under existing federal and state civil rights laws. You can’t discriminate against a person on the basis of their race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, or national origin: I’m pretty sure it won’t take much to start prosecuting ideological discrimination under that broad umbrella. All it takes is an attorney general willing to do the job. And when President Trump returns to the White House he’ll have a much better feel for who he can trust to actually serve him and not sabotage his presidency.
Agree. Blue Checks should represent accountability, not celebrity.
One has the right of security in PERSON and effects in the 4A. Doxing is a violation of a Constitutionally guaranteed right. Removing bots will (or should) come coupled with making doxing itself a federal crime in its responsibility to protect the Constitutional rights of its citizens. The 4A as applied to Law Enforcement has not been also applied to the citizenry. In fact LE uses the “right to protest” to infringe upon private homes. The 1A protects the right to protest Government, NOT people. The tension and concerns of these 4a issues are long overdue to be addressed.
Atlanta’s socialist rag “Creative Loafing” had an anonymous article writer
about 15-20 years ago. The guy had an enormous following, and ridiculed all
the PC crowd mercilessly. He also had an extremely high paying job at a heavy
hitter firm in Atlanta.
The usual suspects went after him with a vengeance, and Creative Loafing
required him to publish under his true name, if he continued to write.
He quit.
Musk is talking about the bot armies controlled by activists, who use them to make one person appear to be hundreds: And people with multiple accounts who use them in the same way.
If you recall Candice Owens’ “red pill” story, she was a default left-leaning liberal until she ran afoul of a radical leftist troll over a very minor disagreement on some leftist dogma. The leftist troll (a standard issue blue haired land whale) warned Candice “the right will attack you” and then after Owens refused to recant her heresy she suddenly began getting hundreds of posts from various “right wing” accounts which were obviously fake controlled by the one woman.
THAT’S what Musk aims to stop, a very tiny minority of radical leftists using armies of bot accounts to skew the numbers and make it appear that as few as a dozen people appear to be hundreds of thousands.
Musk got rich through government subsidies. He sees Twitter as a giant opportunity along these lines.
100 percent correct.
I hate people who proclaim Tesla a “good investment.” Outside of taxpayer subsidies the enterprise is completely insolvent and not a viable business. Investing in it is akin to buying into a Ponzi scheme IMO.
And Obola The Magnificent came out of his bunker today and lauded the Private-Public censorhips of freedom of speech.
Everything is very clear by now… The Davos Cabal controls the Western Governments.
Musk is putting up an LEO constellation for global Internet access.
Just think what that implies.
The Fourth Branch can not shut down SpaceX’s constellation… that would be an outright Civil War.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake:
Colonel… that Coca-Cola machine. I want you to shoot the lock off it. There may be some change in there.
Colonel “Bat” Guano:
That’s private property.
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake:
Colonel! Can you possibly imagine what is going to happen to you, your frame, outlook, way of life, and everything, when they learn that you have obstructed a telephone call to the President of the United States? Can you imagine? Shoot it off! Shoot! With a gun! That’s what the bullets are for, you twit!
Colonel “Bat” Guano:
Okay. I’m gonna get your money for ya. But if you don’t get the President of the United States on that phone, you know what’s gonna happen to you?
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake:
What?
Colonel “Bat” Guano:
You’re gonna have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.
The DOD and NASA need Musk and Russia respectively. They don’t want to be enemies with either one of them, they’ve got nothing to win and a lot to lose.
Do you think the DOD and NASA like what the Fourth Branch and the Davos Davosian Cabal is doing?
There is a split, a weakness here, and Musk is playing it. IMHO, the DOD is likely backing Musk.
Agree with Sundance about hidden government subsidy to Twitter. If Musk wins, the government subsidy will disappear or “break”. Then what?
Bezos:
Blue Origin
Project Kuiper
Rivian
Musk:
SpaceX
Starlink
Tesla
Why doesn’t Bezos just offer one dollar more for Twitter than Musk? 🤔
The deal could be wrapped up in a day.
Saw an anti-Telsa commercial on cable last night – seemed very misplaced….so dark money ramping up its anti-Musk efforts now too.
You go, Elon!
FJB
All well and good in the dynamics of Twitter, but I just plain do not trust Elon. Interesting timing as Truth Social is being built up separate from the Beast. It was just days before Elon’s 9.4% share buy that Nunes announced TS’s platform was nearing completion of its beta stage in Apple for launching its next phase in the public areana of web accessibility. There are no coincidences.
What’s to trust or not. If this isn’t a political/system attack aimed as exposing the USG IC and their constitutional civil rights violations then it’s a genuine offer to buy and if so, what makes you think he wouldn’t flip it to Trump’s acquisitions company? Or even if he wants to run it himself, what’s not to trust?
I don’t get this at all.
Elon Musk is the master of riding US Government subsidies! Tesla was built using them but even more clever Space X and Starlink internet service took advantage of that little “usage fee”in your phone bill to build a satellite internet service for hard to reach areas, part of what that little phone tax is there for. He’s a perfect person to lead a company like Twitter that has to stand on Big Government for viability.