Courts should side with Musk as it is a more than lucrative order and the action by the board is not in the best interests of shareholders. Purely and obviously political move.
On the surface this doesn’t seem to hold up to the 2021 court standards for Delaware (which is where Twitter is incorporated). The pill may be ruled dead by the courts. I’m not 100%, but it was too fast for the recommended meetings and discussions. It was also clearly meant to protect current management, which isn’t a justifiable reason to invoke the rights. I’m not 100% the courts would strike it. I’m more like 50/50. But even being substantiated by the courts permitting the pill, it won’t insulate them from civil action by shareholders.
The board better pray they can prove Musk doesn’t have the cash (which I think he has private equity backing), or a better offer comes along (which if friendly assures the company dies and the white knights lose billions).
I may be wrong, but I believe Twitter is based in Communist California. Regardless they have a year to make a deal with Musk or Twitter will be sunk in the middle of the ocean.
Could be. I’m not in his head. There is all kinds of speculation, I’m more focused on the known facts and what people are actually saying. As a society we have become far too accustomed to lying, and seem unwilling to take anyone at their word. I’m not there yet. I still think it’s worth taking people at their word unless/ until their actual actions negate it.
I'm going to wait and catch it on a down day. Probably going to bounce around for a while. I'm going to put a stop in though. If Musk unsuccessful prolly going into the $20's
Agree. Twitter did $5billion in revenue but lost over $400 million last year alone. Half operating loss and the rest in legal reserve charges - not for deplatforming or defamation lawsuits, but shareholder lawsuits (at least according to the footnotes).
Musk can’t pay $104/ share. He can’t even pay $54.20/ share. Private equity has to be involved. If he were to dump enough Twitter stock to pay cash he’d tank Tesla and owe over 20% in capital gains taxes. He can’t just sell SpaceX - who can buy it???? Wealth is not cash. I don’t understand why journalists seem so incapable of grasping that. Musk has made clear he wants the legally allowed 2,000 shareholders. Realistically he needs them as minority shareholders.
In any event, it’s either a giant troll, which would be funny, that wouldn’t cost him all that much, or he has the backing of at least some of the institutional investors and some private equity on the sidelines that had anticipated the poison pill ready to buy it up to halt the coming crash when the market reopens Monday. There could be a cabal in the background, but Twitter’s credibility is shot.
The reality is Twitter, based on economic fundamentals, isn’t worth huge multiples of its revenue with its current management. Musk’s investment is the only thing that stopped its share price decline in the lower $30’s. Despite huge increases in users and revenue over the last decade, it has yet to turn an operating profit. It’s lost credibility and the current CEO seems to think his job is to dictate on behalf of the regime. And it’s not fun. It was $16/ share pre-Trump and heading back there. A big loss. Sorry if your pension fund or 401(k) is in some ESG crap. I know the investing industry well. Find a broker that will directly invest - not use mutual funds or their ETF mirrors (ETFs are fine as one starts to build wealth, but not once that wealth is mid 6-figures). Or do it yourself. Stop paying places like State Street Capital to wokeify the economy.
I’m not sure how badly Musk wants this. I don’t think Twitter’s board met it’s burden under the 2021 poison pill case in Delaware (where it’s incorporated), so the courts could strike the rights down. This is beyond a stupid action, from a liability standpoint, for the board.
The only way Twitter is worth more is if someone who owns it appeals to a wider audience and institutes at least some reforms Musk wants because most of the population wants them.
In any event, Musk won. It’s a waste of money for anyone to buy and run it as is with the current market valuation Musk propped up, much less what he’s offered. So either some entity will waste literally billions to prop up a dying company that has lost all credibility, Musk will end up owning it with private equity investors, or someone will pay more with some version of Musk’s aspirations and Musk makes out with a couple Billion in profit that he hopes clicks over the 1-year mark before closing or the IRS will around 40%.
I could be completely wrong, but big entities tend to be predictable. The poison pill was predictable. The likely options from here as well.
Soros doesn’t have nearly the funds to buy it. Gates couldn’t raise it. It would consume his private foundation pointlessly. I’m not sure Bezos’s wants it because he wants to be Musk, and running it in its current firm would cost him or Amazon billions. A consortium of woke WEF billionaires could make a better offer, but again, in its current form it’s worthless financially and it’s reputation too damaged to stay relevant.
The crypto guy could buy it, but they don’t want him anymore than Musk.
I’m sure the games will continue, but I’m 🍾 that current Twitter is dead in 2 years, one way or another.
He could, he’s got $180billionish of Tesla stock, but a personal loan type debt would be out of the question because he’s using it for investment purposes, so it would be taken out at margin arena interest rates which are high and going up. That’s a hefty interest bill that compounds quickly, even if the rate is a lot lower than you or I could get.
It’s one thing to borrow a few hundred million for personal spending cash at low interest rates over one’s lifetime when it’s borrowed against billions in equities. That’s a problem for the accountants, IRS, and financial advisors when you die. Tens of billions in borrowed money, at least over a medium to long range time frame, would get sketchy, even backed by a couple hundred billion in equities.
He couldn’t use SpaceX because generally private equity can’t be used as collateral for other private equity. I’m not sure it’s realistic that Musk would use the amount of his Tesla stock to back this Twitter adventure that would be necessary alone, but he “could.” But even for Elon Musk there is a wide gap between could and will. At that kind of money it might be cheaper to sell the stock and pay the long term cap gains. But then he’d risk losing control of Tesla if he wanted to invest in something else big down that road, just as Dorsey lost control of Twitter as his ownership shrunk.
As far as justifying the offer is real to the SEC, he absolutely could point out he has that option. And if it’s over the short term to secure private equity investors it would be a very realistic plan. My guess is that he’d prefer to secure the private equity investors sooner rather than later, at least logically and taking him at his word.
No. Musk is able to borrow under 2% still. If he did buy Twitter with money borrowed using TSLA stock as collateral, he's paying an immaterial amount of interest and would take the company public again within 18 months anyway. Paying cap gains is not going to happen, except for the amount he chooses to pay on an annual basis like he did for 2021 because he's just a nice American. Many rich go there whole lives living on the loans taken out against equity holdings so they can avoid the taxes.
Yes, some billionaires can go their whole lives paying PERSONAL expenses with borrowed money. No, the interest rate is not 2% anymore. They’ve gone up a lot here recently. The rates on those loans are universally variable. Bezos can spend a few billion cash on homes and boats. Backed by his over 100-billion in liquid assets. There is no risk.
Most “rich people” people who take these loans out do it for timing - they pay it down when the market or other assets have a run up in value. It’s a protection from having to sell in down markets, and a way to push gains to long term with lower rates. Very few can go their “while lives” on borrowed money. Even very few of the 0.01%
Paying personal expenses is also a far cry from borrowing tens of billions for investment in private capital. No one can get a rate for investment anywhere near 2% on a huge loan right now. Period.
There is no such thing as immaterial interest charges on a $30billion loan. Considering he’d be lucky to get a variable rate of 4% and rising, and he’s based in TX which doesn’t have an individual income tax, it doesn’t take long for the fed capital gains rate to make more sense than paying interest in an environment where rates are going up, particularly when the private investment isn’t generating a return anywhere near the interest rate.
Musk didn’t pay taxes in 2021 because he’s a “good American.” You can’t really think that right??? He’s not an idiot. He paid taxes in 2021 because he exercised billions in options that were about to expire, triggering actual taxable income at ordinary rates, including CA for the portion he earned there, somewhere between a 51% and 53% effective combined federal and state tax rate depending on how much CA is entitled to as he “earned” at least a large portion of the options from his work while living in CA. He also had to sell shares to exercise the options by buying them at the exercise price - so sell enough to cover their purchase price up front, and the $20billion gain at ordinary income tax rates from exercising the options. The sell 10% was largely gimmick. 🤦♀️
My friend, you need a much, much better CPA and a new and bigger banker. Musk is not in the .01% is he? No, he's the richest man in the world, and he CAN live his whole life on money borrowed against assets without paying much at all in taxes if he does not wish to. You have a zillion other inaccuracies/misunderstandings in your statements that I will just let go, because you certainly seem so confident.
Very interesting, especially the last paragraphs. But the author assumes we are still a constitutional republic, not an oligarchy (cemented in place January 6, 2021).
The US Constitution was designed as a document of enumerated powers. Today it has been corrupted (see eg the Commerce Clause cases and FDR) into a document of enumerated liberties, hence the reliance on the Bill of Rights as the only thing protecting liberty.
Perhaps the most egregious example of this is Wickard v. Filburn. In this case, Roscoe Filburn was fined for growing twice the ‘legal’ limit of wheat. (The Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938 and its 1941 amendments established quotas for wheat production) Filburn argued that this extra wheat was simply to to feed his own animals and wasn’t going to be sold, therefore he couldn’t be fined under the commerce clause. In a crazy ruling, the Supreme Court stated that Filburn growing extra wheat meant he didn’t have to BUY extra wheat, therefore interstate commerce WAS impacted and Congress could regulate.
Growing your own wheat on your own land could be regulated by the federal government via the commerce clause.
The simple fact is that if the Constitution meant what the Supreme Court found it to mean in Wickard v. Filburn, there would be no need for a Constitution at all. Just a note that says “Yep, the federal government can do that, too.”
Precisely. Wickard neutered the Constitution: it became trans-authoritarian and then everything became a fight to the death for the spoils taken by the DC elites.
Exactly this. I think the most likely outcome is that we'll see desperate efforts to retain control that make absolutely no sense in the context of its revenue, market cap, role as an advertising medium, etc. This will raise some very interesting questions and may make it quite obvious that Twitter is worth far more as a social engineering tool than it is as an advertising business.
That was actually Kat Timpf's point on Gutfeld on Thursday night. (I always watch it a day late.) She had the theory that all this freaking out was because the censorship and manipulation are actually worse than people know and if you saw the algorithms you'd be appalled. The Swamp sees Twitter, Google, and Facebook as all that stands between them and political annihilation, and they do not want people to know what they've been doing to keep people from knowing what's going on. And if Twitter opens up, that will force Facebook too, and perhaps Google as well.
Bur we already know the role Twitter plays for the Democrat Tribe - It influences perception by controlling the world-wide distribution of information.
Yes, but as someone pointed out previously, Musk is the largest *individual* shareholder of Twitter. I wish I could remember where I saw that, because IIRC the person explained why Musk was still in a good position as the largest individual shareholder.
“Twitter is considering a poison pill to thwart Elon Musk’s offer,” Cameron Winklevoss correctly predicted adoption of a “poison pill” yesterday. “They would rather self-immolate than give up their censorship programs. This shows you how deeply committed they are to Orwellian control of the narratives and global discourse. Scary,” he added.
Shareholders of Twitter should jump at Elon’s offer. Now, it has been validated that it never has been about shareholder value but a mouthpiece for control freaks.
How much damage has Twitter done to its shareholders with this poison pill strategy by diluting value? Especially if Elon just walks away at this point.
In reality Elon Musk is the largest shareholder. The institutional investors don’t own the investments, they are the custodians for everyday people whose retirement and pension funds they manage. The institutional investors usually do get the proxy votes of the shares they manage. Musk is the largest single owner, but controls the second largest share of the votes.
That means the people have some power here if they will look at their retirement account statements, or pension fund filings, and call the institutions managing that money to discuss how to vote their own shares, or encourage the institution how to vote the proxy shares. That is, if any of this ever actually comes to a vote.
Yes. Elon is a grey wolf. The question is whether him owning Twitter is worse than the current Woke wankers owning Twitter. I don't know the answer. If Elon buys the company, he will have access to the DMs of powerful people that could be used for blackmail. But the Twitter Communists already have that access. So we are at this bizarre crossroads.
However, all indications are that Musk is exasperated by Twitter's censorship and actually wants freer speech on the platform. Listen to his speech yesterday as he describes what he wants to do with the platform (open-source the algorithm, make the currently-secret actions that restrict or terminate accounts public, use timeouts more than complete account deletions and more).
I can't help but wonder if Elon Musk is doing this just to jerk 'em around. Just to make the occupants of the Twitter-scape sit in a corner with their blankies, "therapy chickens," and Play-Doh. Just for the SPECTACLE of upsetting the chronically neurotic.
PLUS, don't forget that Musk is a master of self-promotion. Look what he's done in the last couple days: a few tweets that cost zero, and he's the name on every tongue. He's the subject of every conversation--even my 91-year-old who doesn't have a CLUE about Twitter.
I dunno. Musk is up to something...and it might not be buying Twitter.
Elon has already won. He’s exposed the hypocrisy. He’s shone a spotlight on the pathetic performance. He’s brought the free speech issue to the forefront.
Elon should have said "I want to buy twitter because I think too many conservative voices are still on there and I want to kick them off." After the sale -- PSYCH!!
Mark Cuban - whom I detest significantly - says that there are many people/companies interest in buying Twitter. I would not trust Cuban as far as I could drop-kick him... I suspect he is just racked with billionaire jealousy.
The Swamp can't allow Elon (and the public) to see exactly how much they control Twitter. To them, control over information is literally priceless.
If everyone who cares about freedom (Trump voters) put $500 on average in, they’d have 100%. At $250 each that would be 50% plus Elon’s 9%.
I’m in!
Me too.
Courts should side with Musk as it is a more than lucrative order and the action by the board is not in the best interests of shareholders. Purely and obviously political move.
On the surface this doesn’t seem to hold up to the 2021 court standards for Delaware (which is where Twitter is incorporated). The pill may be ruled dead by the courts. I’m not 100%, but it was too fast for the recommended meetings and discussions. It was also clearly meant to protect current management, which isn’t a justifiable reason to invoke the rights. I’m not 100% the courts would strike it. I’m more like 50/50. But even being substantiated by the courts permitting the pill, it won’t insulate them from civil action by shareholders.
The board better pray they can prove Musk doesn’t have the cash (which I think he has private equity backing), or a better offer comes along (which if friendly assures the company dies and the white knights lose billions).
I may be wrong, but I believe Twitter is based in Communist California. Regardless they have a year to make a deal with Musk or Twitter will be sunk in the middle of the ocean.
Could be. I’m not in his head. There is all kinds of speculation, I’m more focused on the known facts and what people are actually saying. As a society we have become far too accustomed to lying, and seem unwilling to take anyone at their word. I’m not there yet. I still think it’s worth taking people at their word unless/ until their actual actions negate it.
Me - need a leader to initate.
I'm not a Trump supporter, but I do care about freedom
I would think anyone would be welcome who is dedicated to open debate, equality and liberty. 😀
Freedom and country comes before anything else. Nice move.
For sure, right after God and family
No argument from me.
I bought 100 shares
I'm 90% sure I will this morning.
I did
I'm going to wait and catch it on a down day. Probably going to bounce around for a while. I'm going to put a stop in though. If Musk unsuccessful prolly going into the $20's
Going to buy 100 shares today.
I'm in. I'd like to sue the little Twits into insolvency for banning the truth on their platform. They've taken down three different accounts of mine.
And then give their proxy to Elon.
Yes. Or just vote his slate. 😀
Agree. Twitter did $5billion in revenue but lost over $400 million last year alone. Half operating loss and the rest in legal reserve charges - not for deplatforming or defamation lawsuits, but shareholder lawsuits (at least according to the footnotes).
Musk can’t pay $104/ share. He can’t even pay $54.20/ share. Private equity has to be involved. If he were to dump enough Twitter stock to pay cash he’d tank Tesla and owe over 20% in capital gains taxes. He can’t just sell SpaceX - who can buy it???? Wealth is not cash. I don’t understand why journalists seem so incapable of grasping that. Musk has made clear he wants the legally allowed 2,000 shareholders. Realistically he needs them as minority shareholders.
In any event, it’s either a giant troll, which would be funny, that wouldn’t cost him all that much, or he has the backing of at least some of the institutional investors and some private equity on the sidelines that had anticipated the poison pill ready to buy it up to halt the coming crash when the market reopens Monday. There could be a cabal in the background, but Twitter’s credibility is shot.
The reality is Twitter, based on economic fundamentals, isn’t worth huge multiples of its revenue with its current management. Musk’s investment is the only thing that stopped its share price decline in the lower $30’s. Despite huge increases in users and revenue over the last decade, it has yet to turn an operating profit. It’s lost credibility and the current CEO seems to think his job is to dictate on behalf of the regime. And it’s not fun. It was $16/ share pre-Trump and heading back there. A big loss. Sorry if your pension fund or 401(k) is in some ESG crap. I know the investing industry well. Find a broker that will directly invest - not use mutual funds or their ETF mirrors (ETFs are fine as one starts to build wealth, but not once that wealth is mid 6-figures). Or do it yourself. Stop paying places like State Street Capital to wokeify the economy.
I’m not sure how badly Musk wants this. I don’t think Twitter’s board met it’s burden under the 2021 poison pill case in Delaware (where it’s incorporated), so the courts could strike the rights down. This is beyond a stupid action, from a liability standpoint, for the board.
The only way Twitter is worth more is if someone who owns it appeals to a wider audience and institutes at least some reforms Musk wants because most of the population wants them.
In any event, Musk won. It’s a waste of money for anyone to buy and run it as is with the current market valuation Musk propped up, much less what he’s offered. So either some entity will waste literally billions to prop up a dying company that has lost all credibility, Musk will end up owning it with private equity investors, or someone will pay more with some version of Musk’s aspirations and Musk makes out with a couple Billion in profit that he hopes clicks over the 1-year mark before closing or the IRS will around 40%.
I could be completely wrong, but big entities tend to be predictable. The poison pill was predictable. The likely options from here as well.
Soros doesn’t have nearly the funds to buy it. Gates couldn’t raise it. It would consume his private foundation pointlessly. I’m not sure Bezos’s wants it because he wants to be Musk, and running it in its current firm would cost him or Amazon billions. A consortium of woke WEF billionaires could make a better offer, but again, in its current form it’s worthless financially and it’s reputation too damaged to stay relevant.
The crypto guy could buy it, but they don’t want him anymore than Musk.
I’m sure the games will continue, but I’m 🍾 that current Twitter is dead in 2 years, one way or another.
Fantastic analysis👍
He can borrow against his Tesla shares, easily.
He could, he’s got $180billionish of Tesla stock, but a personal loan type debt would be out of the question because he’s using it for investment purposes, so it would be taken out at margin arena interest rates which are high and going up. That’s a hefty interest bill that compounds quickly, even if the rate is a lot lower than you or I could get.
It’s one thing to borrow a few hundred million for personal spending cash at low interest rates over one’s lifetime when it’s borrowed against billions in equities. That’s a problem for the accountants, IRS, and financial advisors when you die. Tens of billions in borrowed money, at least over a medium to long range time frame, would get sketchy, even backed by a couple hundred billion in equities.
He couldn’t use SpaceX because generally private equity can’t be used as collateral for other private equity. I’m not sure it’s realistic that Musk would use the amount of his Tesla stock to back this Twitter adventure that would be necessary alone, but he “could.” But even for Elon Musk there is a wide gap between could and will. At that kind of money it might be cheaper to sell the stock and pay the long term cap gains. But then he’d risk losing control of Tesla if he wanted to invest in something else big down that road, just as Dorsey lost control of Twitter as his ownership shrunk.
As far as justifying the offer is real to the SEC, he absolutely could point out he has that option. And if it’s over the short term to secure private equity investors it would be a very realistic plan. My guess is that he’d prefer to secure the private equity investors sooner rather than later, at least logically and taking him at his word.
No. Musk is able to borrow under 2% still. If he did buy Twitter with money borrowed using TSLA stock as collateral, he's paying an immaterial amount of interest and would take the company public again within 18 months anyway. Paying cap gains is not going to happen, except for the amount he chooses to pay on an annual basis like he did for 2021 because he's just a nice American. Many rich go there whole lives living on the loans taken out against equity holdings so they can avoid the taxes.
You are simply wrong.
Yes, some billionaires can go their whole lives paying PERSONAL expenses with borrowed money. No, the interest rate is not 2% anymore. They’ve gone up a lot here recently. The rates on those loans are universally variable. Bezos can spend a few billion cash on homes and boats. Backed by his over 100-billion in liquid assets. There is no risk.
Most “rich people” people who take these loans out do it for timing - they pay it down when the market or other assets have a run up in value. It’s a protection from having to sell in down markets, and a way to push gains to long term with lower rates. Very few can go their “while lives” on borrowed money. Even very few of the 0.01%
Paying personal expenses is also a far cry from borrowing tens of billions for investment in private capital. No one can get a rate for investment anywhere near 2% on a huge loan right now. Period.
There is no such thing as immaterial interest charges on a $30billion loan. Considering he’d be lucky to get a variable rate of 4% and rising, and he’s based in TX which doesn’t have an individual income tax, it doesn’t take long for the fed capital gains rate to make more sense than paying interest in an environment where rates are going up, particularly when the private investment isn’t generating a return anywhere near the interest rate.
Musk didn’t pay taxes in 2021 because he’s a “good American.” You can’t really think that right??? He’s not an idiot. He paid taxes in 2021 because he exercised billions in options that were about to expire, triggering actual taxable income at ordinary rates, including CA for the portion he earned there, somewhere between a 51% and 53% effective combined federal and state tax rate depending on how much CA is entitled to as he “earned” at least a large portion of the options from his work while living in CA. He also had to sell shares to exercise the options by buying them at the exercise price - so sell enough to cover their purchase price up front, and the $20billion gain at ordinary income tax rates from exercising the options. The sell 10% was largely gimmick. 🤦♀️
My friend, you need a much, much better CPA and a new and bigger banker. Musk is not in the .01% is he? No, he's the richest man in the world, and he CAN live his whole life on money borrowed against assets without paying much at all in taxes if he does not wish to. You have a zillion other inaccuracies/misunderstandings in your statements that I will just let go, because you certainly seem so confident.
It all comes with liability but it’s Musk that would swallow the poison pill if he acquired more than 15%
Monica at American Thinker has an interesting column on this very subject just today:
https://bit.ly/3jG6umY
Very interesting, especially the last paragraphs. But the author assumes we are still a constitutional republic, not an oligarchy (cemented in place January 6, 2021).
Unfortunately our constitution is becoming nothing but a figurehead, like the British royals.
The US Constitution was designed as a document of enumerated powers. Today it has been corrupted (see eg the Commerce Clause cases and FDR) into a document of enumerated liberties, hence the reliance on the Bill of Rights as the only thing protecting liberty.
You nailed it.
https://simulationcommander.substack.com/p/my-freedom-protects-you-your-freedom
Perhaps the most egregious example of this is Wickard v. Filburn. In this case, Roscoe Filburn was fined for growing twice the ‘legal’ limit of wheat. (The Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1938 and its 1941 amendments established quotas for wheat production) Filburn argued that this extra wheat was simply to to feed his own animals and wasn’t going to be sold, therefore he couldn’t be fined under the commerce clause. In a crazy ruling, the Supreme Court stated that Filburn growing extra wheat meant he didn’t have to BUY extra wheat, therefore interstate commerce WAS impacted and Congress could regulate.
Growing your own wheat on your own land could be regulated by the federal government via the commerce clause.
The simple fact is that if the Constitution meant what the Supreme Court found it to mean in Wickard v. Filburn, there would be no need for a Constitution at all. Just a note that says “Yep, the federal government can do that, too.”
Precisely. Wickard neutered the Constitution: it became trans-authoritarian and then everything became a fight to the death for the spoils taken by the DC elites.
That's really good.
If accurate, ......... WOW!!
I hope that he reinstate Uncle Joey's Cognition on the very first day.
Exactly this. I think the most likely outcome is that we'll see desperate efforts to retain control that make absolutely no sense in the context of its revenue, market cap, role as an advertising medium, etc. This will raise some very interesting questions and may make it quite obvious that Twitter is worth far more as a social engineering tool than it is as an advertising business.
That was actually Kat Timpf's point on Gutfeld on Thursday night. (I always watch it a day late.) She had the theory that all this freaking out was because the censorship and manipulation are actually worse than people know and if you saw the algorithms you'd be appalled. The Swamp sees Twitter, Google, and Facebook as all that stands between them and political annihilation, and they do not want people to know what they've been doing to keep people from knowing what's going on. And if Twitter opens up, that will force Facebook too, and perhaps Google as well.
Bur we already know the role Twitter plays for the Democrat Tribe - It influences perception by controlling the world-wide distribution of information.
"I see him when I get into my Tesla." Totally believable, that's how disconnected from reality these people are.
Exactly take a look at some of the names, Larry Fink of Blackrock and Morgan Stanley to name just two. They use our money against us. Wonderful.
Yes, but as someone pointed out previously, Musk is the largest *individual* shareholder of Twitter. I wish I could remember where I saw that, because IIRC the person explained why Musk was still in a good position as the largest individual shareholder.
I really hope Elon pulls the trigger and buys Twitter. Please.
He has already WON regardless
“Twitter is considering a poison pill to thwart Elon Musk’s offer,” Cameron Winklevoss correctly predicted adoption of a “poison pill” yesterday. “They would rather self-immolate than give up their censorship programs. This shows you how deeply committed they are to Orwellian control of the narratives and global discourse. Scary,” he added.
Shareholders of Twitter should jump at Elon’s offer. Now, it has been validated that it never has been about shareholder value but a mouthpiece for control freaks.
I was playing the song “Free Bird” really loud as I read this for full theatrical effect.
How much damage has Twitter done to its shareholders with this poison pill strategy by diluting value? Especially if Elon just walks away at this point.
As the second largest shareholder, I am sure Elon has legal options to go after the Board for breach of fiduciary duty at this point.
In reality Elon Musk is the largest shareholder. The institutional investors don’t own the investments, they are the custodians for everyday people whose retirement and pension funds they manage. The institutional investors usually do get the proxy votes of the shares they manage. Musk is the largest single owner, but controls the second largest share of the votes.
That means the people have some power here if they will look at their retirement account statements, or pension fund filings, and call the institutions managing that money to discuss how to vote their own shares, or encourage the institution how to vote the proxy shares. That is, if any of this ever actually comes to a vote.
Right!
Considering Elon is in with the The World Economic Forum, what makes anyone think that Elon is really for free speech or whatever he is proposing.
Elon Musk and the WEF
A Brief Recap and Analysis of What's Been Said About Elon Musk
https://medium.com/technology-hits/elon-musk-and-the-wef-dcaf4bec2084
-In his talk at the WEF, Elon Musk discussed how society needs to work together to create some kind of world government.
I don't think the WEF is interested in free speech.
Yes. Elon is a grey wolf. The question is whether him owning Twitter is worse than the current Woke wankers owning Twitter. I don't know the answer. If Elon buys the company, he will have access to the DMs of powerful people that could be used for blackmail. But the Twitter Communists already have that access. So we are at this bizarre crossroads.
You think all those DMs and emails and phones aren't already watched..... bwahhhhh hahhhahaha
No, the WEF isn't. They are pushing a narrative.
However, all indications are that Musk is exasperated by Twitter's censorship and actually wants freer speech on the platform. Listen to his speech yesterday as he describes what he wants to do with the platform (open-source the algorithm, make the currently-secret actions that restrict or terminate accounts public, use timeouts more than complete account deletions and more).
LIVE: Elon Musk Gives TED Talk in Vancouver
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO0bVep4D5o
Open source the algorithm…rad
Agreed!
I can't help but wonder if Elon Musk is doing this just to jerk 'em around. Just to make the occupants of the Twitter-scape sit in a corner with their blankies, "therapy chickens," and Play-Doh. Just for the SPECTACLE of upsetting the chronically neurotic.
PLUS, don't forget that Musk is a master of self-promotion. Look what he's done in the last couple days: a few tweets that cost zero, and he's the name on every tongue. He's the subject of every conversation--even my 91-year-old who doesn't have a CLUE about Twitter.
I dunno. Musk is up to something...and it might not be buying Twitter.
It may be the best troll of all time.
Precisely!
It does seem he’s having a great time with this!
Elon has already won. He’s exposed the hypocrisy. He’s shone a spotlight on the pathetic performance. He’s brought the free speech issue to the forefront.
If the deal falls through, twitter stock will tank if Musk sells off his stock. Twitter board loses either way.
I hope the bunch of woke ass twits burn in hell.
Elon should have said "I want to buy twitter because I think too many conservative voices are still on there and I want to kick them off." After the sale -- PSYCH!!
Twitter is a jobs program for lawyers that runs a crappy social media site on the side.
“If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me
For I must be traveling on now
'Cause there's too many places I've got to see
But if I stay here with you, girl
Things just couldn't be the same
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now
And this bird you cannot change”
Mark Cuban - whom I detest significantly - says that there are many people/companies interest in buying Twitter. I would not trust Cuban as far as I could drop-kick him... I suspect he is just racked with billionaire jealousy.
The cries emanating from the Sham Francisco balconies must be epic over this.
Good.