Musk not only refused to join Twitter's board, but also wanted to fire the board's squid.
On April 18, local time, Tesla CEO Elon Musk posted on Twitter, "If my acquisition is successful, the salary of Twitter's board will become $0, which is equivalent to saving $3 million per year for Twitter." ”
The tweet was a response to Gary Black, a partner at investment advisory firm The Future Fund LLC. Gary Black listed the 2021 income of board members in his tweet and said, "Let me point out something obvious: If Musk takes Twitter private, Twitter board members will lose their jobs." They make $250,000 to $300,000 a year and are a good part-time job. ”
In the scramble with Musk's "Game of Thrones," Twitter's board is exposing more issues.
On April 16, local time, venture capitalist Garry Tan tweeted, "The wrong partner on the board can bring losses of up to $1 billion." Jack Dorsey, former CEO of Twitter, replied that this has always been a dysfunction of Twitter.
On April 18, local time, CNBC reporter Scott Wapner tweeted Jack Dorsey, "If you think Twitter's board is now/ever dysfunctional, making the company unable to be as great as you suggest, why didn't you take any action on it when you took the helm of the company?" ”
Jack Dorsey replied, "There's a lot to say, but nothing to say. ”
On April 14, Musk, Twitter's largest shareholder, offered to buy Twitter's issued common stock at a cash price of $54.20 per share for a total of about $43 billion, and Twitter confirmed that it had received the offer and said its board would review the offer.
Later that day, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Wall Street Journal reported that the special tweet was considering a "poison pill plan", a legal mechanism to prevent Musk from significantly increasing his stake in the company. The "Poison Pill Plan", also known as the "Equity Dilution Anti-Takeover Measure" or the "Shareholders' Equity Plan", is a defensive measure against hostile takeovers by the acquired company.
According to the Wall Street Journal, on April 14, local time, Musk said in an interview at a TED conference in Vancouver that he did not care about making money from Twitter and admitted that his proposal to buy the company and take it private may not succeed.
Musk also said he would have a Plan B if Twitter's board didn't accept his offer, but declined to elaborate on what that meant. Musk stressed that he wants to retain as many shareholders as the law allows in private companies.
Bloomberg reported on April 17 that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and private equity firm Thomas Bravo may be interested in joining Musk and pushing the acquisition funding up to $50 billion.
On April 18, the Wall Street Journal quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that Apollo had discussed a potential deal to support the acquisition of Twitter, which could offer equity or debt to Musk or other bidders such as private equity firm Thomas Bravo to support its acquisition. Other people familiar with the matter said twitter is expected to reject Musk's proposal in the coming days.
As of the U.S. stock market close on April 18, Twitter was up 7.48% at $48.45 a share.