Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44B and will privatize company
BREAKING NEWS
Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44B and
will privatize company
By ASSOCIATED PRESS | PUBLISHED: | UPDATED:
TOM KRISHER and MATT O’BRIEN
Elon Musk reached an agreement to buy Twitter for roughly $44 billion on
Monday, promising a more lenient touch to policing content on the platform
where he promotes his interests, attacks critics and opines on social and
economic issues to more than 83 million followers.
The outspoken Tesla CEO, who is also the world’s wealthiest person, has
said he wanted to buy and privatize Twitter because he thinks it’s not living
up to its potential as a platform for free speech.
Musk said in a joint statement with Twitter that he wants to make the
service “better than ever” with new features, such as getting rid of automated
“spam bots” and making its algorithms open to the public to increase trust.
“Free
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,” he
said.
The deal was cemented roughly two weeks after the billionaire first
revealed a 9 percent stake in the platform. Musk said last week that he had
lined up $46.5 billion in financing to buy Twitter, putting pressure on the
company’s board to negotiate a deal.
Twitter said the transaction was unanimously approved by its board of
directors. The 11-member board includes Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack
Dorsey, who has been planning to step down from the board in May. Twitter said
the deal is expected to close sometime this year and is subject to the approval
of Twitter stockholders and regulators.
Shares of Twitter Inc. rose 6% Monday to $52 per share. On April 14,
Musk announced an offer to buy the social media platform for $54.20 per share.
While the stock is up sharply since Musk made his offer, it is well below the
high of $77 per share it reached in February 2021.
Musk has described himself as a “free-speech absolutist” but is also
known for blocking or disparaging other Twitter users who question or disagree
with him.
In
recent weeks, he has voiced a number of proposed changes for the company, from
relaxing its content restrictions — such as the rules that suspended former
President Donald Trump’s account — to ridding the platform of fake and
automated accounts, and shifting away from its advertising-based revenue model.
Asked during a recent TED talk if there are any limits to his notion of
“free speech,” Musk said Twitter or any forum is “obviously bound by the laws
of the country that it operates in. So obviously there are some limitations on
free speech in the US, and, of course, Twitter would have to abide by those
rules.”
Beyond that, though, he said he’d be “very reluctant” to delete things
and in general be cautious about permanent bans.
It won’t be perfect, Musk added, “but I think we want it to really have
the perception and reality that speech is as free as reasonably possible.”
Twitter had initially enacted an anti-takeover measure known as a poison
pill that could make a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive. But the board
decided to negotiate after Musk updated his proposal last week to show he had
secured financing, according to The Wall Street Journal.
While Twitter’s user base of more than 200 million remains much smaller
than those of rivals such as Facebook and TikTok, the service is popular with
celebrities, world leaders, journalists and intellectuals. Musk himself is a
prolific tweeter with a following that rivals several pop stars in the ranks of
the most popular accounts.
Last week, he said in documents filed with U.S. securities regulators
that the money would come from Morgan Stanley and other banks, some of it
secured by his huge stake in Tesla.
Musk is the world’s wealthiest person, according to Forbes, with a
nearly $279 billion fortune. But much of his money is tied up in Tesla stock —
he owns about 17% of the electric car company, according to FactSet, which is
valued at more than $1 trillion — and SpaceX, his privately held space company.
It’s unclear how much cash Musk has.
Musk began making his fortune in 1999 when he sold Zip2, an online
mapping and business directory, to Compaq for $307 million. He used his share
to create what would become PayPal, an internet service that bypassed banks and
allowed consumers to pay businesses directly. It was sold to eBay for $1.5
billion in 2002.
That same year, Musk founded Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX,
after finding that cost constraints were limiting NASA’s interplanetary travel.
The company eventually developed cost-effective reusable rockets.
In 2004, Musk was courted to invest in Tesla, then a startup trying to
build an electric car. Eventually he became CEO and led the company to
astronomical success as the world’s most valuable automaker and largest seller
of electric vehicles.
Krisher reported from Detroit. O’Brien
reported from Providence, R.I. AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan reported from
London.
https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/04/25/elon-musk-buys-twitter-for-44b-and-will-privatize-company/
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