It’s been a wild month of news for the social network we collectively love to hate. In early April, Elon Musk took a bite out of Twitter, taking 9.2% of the company and planning to exert his influence over the company through his board of directors. After that, retiring from his planned board seat, Musk came up with an even more outrageous plan: he would buy the company outright and take it private. Absolutely everyone was freaked out by this and had an opinion and some of those opinions cast doubt on the seriousness of the famous tech tycoon’s grand plans.
Musk’s $43 billion offer valued Twitter for less than it was trading a year ago, begging the question: Is this guy for real? We don’t really know yet, Musk is fickle and notoriously prone to big goofy stunts, but he’s apparently raising the money with the help of Morgan Stanley and Bank of America.
Musk is the richest man in the world, but he’s also relatively cash poor for a mega-billionaire, so making his move on Twitter would require him to divest the shares he owns in Tesla and SpaceX, the two companies he apparently runs while we’re at it. he whips everyone into a frenzy over his totally unnecessary ambitions to buy Twitter and reshape it in his image. Meanwhile, Twitter is working to defend against Musk’s advances with a poison pill defense, which would allow existing shareholders to buy more shares at rock-bottom prices, effectively diluting the company’s stock and raising the price of its offer.
Since we’re talking about Musk, anyone can guess what will happen next, but here’s what’s happened so far. We will provide updates as the story continues to unfold.
A timeline of the Elon Musk-Twitter saga
1. US Regulators Said Someone Really Should Monitor Elon Musk’s Tweets
Before Musk made a bid for Twitter, SEC regulators said they had the authority to subpoena Tesla’s CEO over his tweets and even urged a federal judge not to let the executive get away with unrestrained tweeting. .
2. Elon Musk tweets that he is “seriously thinking” about building his own social media platform.
Shortly after US regulators urged a judge to monitor Musk’s tweets, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX said he was seriously thinking about building the “next Twitter.”
3. Elon Musk buys 9.2% of Twitter shares on April 4
Twitter posted a note confirming that the SpaceX and Tesla entrepreneur has acquired a 9.2% stake in the company, which equates to around $2.9 billion based on the stock price on Friday (March 4).
4. Elon Musk gets a seat on Twitter’s board of directors the next day, April 5
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Elon Musk was appointed to Twitter’s board of directors in a series of tweets:
5. In a major change, Elon Musk will no longer join Twitter’s board, announced on April 10.
Later that week, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that he would not be joining the social media company’s board. Agrawal’s revelation follows a series of unusual tweets from Elon Musk over the same weekend in which he loudly asked his more than 80 million followers if Twitter was dying, citing the low frequency of tweets by some of the tweeters. most popular personalities of the social network.
6. A Twitter shareholder sues after Musk did not immediately disclose his huge investment in Twitter
A Twitter shareholder sued Musk in a federal securities class action lawsuit because Musk failed to disclose his 5% stake in Twitter when asked to do so. The delay allowed Musk to buy more Twitter stock at a lower price and trick sellers of Twitter stock into higher profits, the plaintiff alleges.
7. Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter, the entire company, for $43 billion on April 14
The billionaire said he is willing to pay $54.20 per share to buy 100% of the company. It would be an all-cash offer that values the social network at $43.4 billion. He filed the offer with the SEC and tweeted it hours before being interviewed on Ted.
8. Elon Musk interviews Ted hours after tweeting his big offer
The controversial CEO of Tesla and SpaceX was already preparing to speak at the TED2022 conference for a conversation that was so in demand that TED made the live stream available to the public.
9. The next day, April 15, the Twitter forum turns to the defense everyone has been waiting for: the poison pill.
Twitter’s board of directors announced in a press release that the company is adopting a time-limited shareholder rights plan, a “poison pill” in M&A parlance. While the company doesn’t directly name Elon Musk, Twitter is clearly trying to prevent the billionaire from buying the social network.
10. Elon Musk Discusses How He Would Finance His $43 Billion Twitter Bid
To summarize: Musk intends to borrow around $13 billion in various ways; borrow $12.5 billion against its own equity holdings; and pay about $21 billion of his own holdings. It’s a somewhat complicated collection of funding sources, but Musk’s offering isn’t small, so the path to assembling the necessary cash into a single stack is understandably tricky.