Elon Musk takes over Twitter for $44 billion

René Resch

Update April 26th:

Twitter has announced that the short message service has accepted Elon Musk’s takeover bid. Musk is paying $44 billion for the acquisition. Musk plans to delist Twitter after takeover. Shareholders will receive $54.20 per share.

“Freedom of expression is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital marketplace where important issues affecting the future of humanity are discussed,” Musk said. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by improving the product with new features that open source algorithms to increase trust, beat the spam bots, and authenticate everyone. Twitter has a Huge potential – I look forward to working with the company and the user community to unlock it.”

update end

According to media reports, Twitter is now negotiating the offer with Tesla CEO Elon Musk – and the deal could go ahead as early as this week, according to Bloomberg. Twitter had previously expressed reservations about Elon Musk’s takeover bid. But the pressure from the shareholders probably led to a rethink.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, citing insider circles, the first talks are said to have already taken place on Sunday and Twitter now wants to take a look at the offer again. Reason for the change of heart: Musk probably held video conferences with selected shareholders.

After Elon Musk had taken over 9 percent of the Twitter shares, he announced shortly before Easter that he wanted to take over Twitter completely and submitted an offer to the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a complete takeover worth 43.4 billion US dollars. we reported:

Twitter wanted to prevent takeover with board plans

Twitter resisted the takeover and the board of directors approved a plan to strengthen shareholder rights and make a takeover of Elon Musk more difficult. Shareholders could have bought more shares at lower prices. In an emergency, Twitter would have prevented the takeover by buying up shares from the shareholders on a large scale and would have paid a control premium to the remaining shareholders. Apparently, Twitter is now refraining from these plans.

According to Musk, he has raised $46.5 billion for a possible Twitter takeover and is currently considering a direct purchase offer. According to the “WSJ”, Twitter could officially comment on Thursday when the quarterly figures are due to be announced, maybe earlier. After that, Twitter could suggest “other offers or other terms” to Elon Musk.

Also interesting:

Below the belt: Elon Musk rails against Bill Gates