Wen | move point technology
The author | Yellow Dust
Edited | Steven Lee
Musk has been active on Twitter for a long time, and there are even claims that he uses Twitter to govern the company. However, after Musk's widespread success at Tesla, his ambitions for Twitter have gradually surfaced.
According to the Wall Street Journal on April 24, after Musk announced a $46.5 billion financing plan, Twitter is re-evaluating Musk's acquisition plan, and the two sides intend to start talks on April 24, local time.
Previously, Twitter shareholders' attitudes towards its acquisition were not uniform, but only 10 days later, the situation changed. After Musk outlined his acquisition financing plans on Thursday, many reached out to Twitter urging them not to let the deal slip away. As a result, the attitude of shareholders who had previously resisted the takeover began to loosen.
Acquiring Twitter, planning ahead?
In August 2018, Musk tweeted that he was prepared to take Tesla private at $420 a share and that the funds were in place. As soon as the news came out, Tesla's stock price soared, and the next day it attracted an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (hereinafter referred to as the SEC), which believed that Musk's funding for privatizing Tesla was unknown and suspected of taking advantage of the opportunity to inflate Tesla's stock price.
More than half a month later, under the obstruction of multiple forces, Musk had to abandon the privatization plan, and Tesla's stock price fell sharply. A significant number of investors felt cheated and jointly took Musk to court. Meanwhile, the SEC formally filed civil charges and $20 million in fines against Musk and Tesla. In the end, Musk was forced to resign as tesla chairman, agreeing to go through pre-review by the company's internal lawyers before tweeting in the future, and paid the corresponding fine. The matter is over for the time being.
However, Musk has always been grumpy. Since then, he has repeated the old story, saying that his previous "private affair" with the SEC was forced, and he quietly bought Twitter stock. On March 26, Musk sent several tweets expressing his dissatisfaction with Twitter. On April 4, SEC-related documents showed that Musk held a 9.2% stake in Twitter, about 73.48 million shares, which is about 4 times the 2.25% of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey. The document on Investment Twitter was submitted on March 14, but was not announced until recently. Under the U.S. Securities Act, a 5% stake in a company is required to be disclosed within 10 days.
When he bought Twitter shares, he did not disclose his 5% stake within the specified time limit as required by the Securities Law. Instead, the time difference was used to accelerate the purchase to reduce the overall acquisition cost, which was not disclosed to the outside world until the 9.2% stake reached. Howard Fischer, a partner at Moses & Singer Law Firm, said in an interview with Reuters that musk's actions could be seen as a form of market manipulation given that Musk had previously bought a stake in Twitter. Fischer noted that the SEC will carefully examine whether it can bring allegations of manipulation and failure to disclose in a timely manner.
Musk who is reluctant to stop
Not long ago, in a filing with the SEC, Musk revealed that he had raised $46.5 billion for the acquisition, of which banks such as Morgan Stanley would provide $25.5 billion in loans, and the remaining $21 billion would be resolved by Musk himself.
Musk's takeover triggered Twitter's anti-hostile takeover mechanism, which launched the Poison Pill Program, in which once an entity, individual, or group acquires more than 15 percent of Twitter's issued common stock in a transaction without board approval, the "Poison Pill Plan" will take effect, and Twitter will allow other shareholders to buy additional shares at a discounted price to maximize the acquisition cost.
The scheming Musk immediately tweeted that Twitter's board of directors' act of blocking the acquisition was completely "disregarding the interests of shareholders." In addition, in a text message to Twitter Board Chairman Brett Taylor, he stated that the price he had given at $54.20 per share was already high and in the interest of Twitter shareholders, noting that Twitter's current disadvantages could only be saved by it, and that if the acquisition failed, he would reconsider his position as a majority shareholder.
Perhaps considering that once Musk sells Twitter stock in his hand, Twitter's stock price may usher in an avalanche, and its position in social media will also accelerate its decline, and several of Twitter's board members do not want to lose their money, so Twitter said in a statement released on the 21st of this month that the company has received Musk's latest proposal, and the board of directors is "committed to careful, comprehensive and careful review to determine the course of action that best meets the interests of the company and all shareholders of Twitter."
Twitter variables after the acquisition
Musk has said that his acquisition of Twitter is to promote free speech, "If Twitter is acquired, the first thing to do is to deal with robot trolls and scam emails." He wants to open up Twitter's algorithms and believes Twitter should "be very careful about issuing a permanent ban and try not to remove content from the platform." The New York Times also mentioned that Musk's preference is to run Twitter the way he uses Twitter, that is, there are no restrictions.
There are also reports that Musk suggested adding a Tweet editing function to fix errors in tweets that have already been posted. Earlier this month, he surveyed Twitter users about whether he wanted to add a Tweet editing feature, with more than 4 million users voting, with more than 70 percent of respondents saying they wanted to add the feature. In addition, Musk also suggested making Twitter's algorithm open source, which means that others outside of Twitter will be able to view the source code and can suggest fixes and changes.
It can be seen that once acquired, Musk is likely to relax the content control regulations currently implemented by Twitter and cancel some "anti-hate speech" measures. Twitter has long been criticized by users for many hateful and racist remarks, and once it is released again under Musk's leadership, it is likely to be resisted by Twitter management and the majority of users.
Some netizens think Musk is doing a show because he has always used Twitter as his prying platform. BotSentinel, founder of analytics services botsentinel, said: "If someone like Musk takes over Twitter, it will have a negative impact on the world. Butch said Musk's philosophy could turn Twitter into a "quagmire of error and disinformation" with bad consequences.
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