After weeks of speculation, it is now official. The world’s richest person Elon Musk is now going to be the 100% owner of the micro-blogging platform Twitter as Twitter’s board accepts his proposal to buy out all of Twitter. The South African-born billionaire had made an offer to the Twitter board at 54.20 US Dollars per share, a 54% premium over the day before Musk began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before Musk’s investment was publicly announced.
At the offered price, it will cost Elon Musk around 43 Billion USD to buy Twitter, around 15% of his net worth right now. However, not all of this 43 Billion will be coming from Musk’s pocket as he has already lined up investments above 46 Billion to support his Twitter takeover.
Elon Musk, who is already the largest individual shareholder of Twitter holding 9.2% of the company, had earlier stated that he has no faith in the current management and can’t fulfill Twitter’s true potential under them. He aimed to take the company private so that he can have full control over it and can direct Twitter to fulfill its full potential.
Twitter’s board had tried its best to resist Elon Musk’s takeover bid, including trying to trigger the poison pill strategy. However, the price Musk offered coupled with the mood of the majority of Twitter shareholders eventually forced the Twitter board’s hand.
Elon Musk, who is already the CEO of electric vehicle giant Tesla and SpaceX, co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI as well as the founder of The Boring Company, is now going to be the owner of the social media giant Twitter.
What can we expect from Twitter under Elon Musk leadership
Elon Musk has repeatedly said that freedom of speech is of utmost importance to him, and is one of the main motivations behind his purchase of Twitter. Musk, who often posts jokes and memes on Twitter, has been miffed with the control Twitter exercises over its users and has never hidden his desire to support free speech. Going forward, we are likely to see a more level playing field on Twitter, where the organization no longer supports the left and censors the right.
Whether Musk lives up to his word, and there is no reason to doubt he won’t, we will wait and see.
