Yes, because it's not really public vs. private that matters, in both cases it's whether the shareholders care. (If it's public they complain to the SEC, if it's private they complain to their contract lawyers who hopefully included some accountability in the contracts.)
This is also why Musk can get away with it - he's got fanboys, albeit of slightly different types, dominating the shareholders in both cases. (In the case of Twitter he may even be personally the majority shareholder with no obligations beyond cash now, but who knows...)
For sure, I was only replying on whether X/Twitter will remain private in the future.
Given that Musk has put other peoples money in the purchase, they will probably ask for an exit at some point.
Things like this happen from time to time in big companies, and as the article highlights, happened at Twitter prior to Musk’s acquisition. There will likely be fines and the company will work through it.
No. It’s not. Musk bought Twitter and took it private. Tesla is still a publicly traded company that Musk (as I understand it) actually had to sell a non-trivially portion of his stock in in order to finance part of the deal.
I'm not sure that Twitter could really sensibly demand damages if the sale went through.
If Twitter is still sold at the original fixed price, then Musk is left holding the asset he himself damaged and would have to essentially pay damages to himself.
The shareholders will still get the same payout regardless of the alleged damage to the company, unless they decided to sell before the sale, but I am not a lawyer so I don't know if they'd be able to sue successfully.
Of course, I don't believe Musk is the sole owner, so his co-buyers might have a case.
This is a very important and under-appreciated risk. It makes Musk perhaps a uniquely unsuitable owner Twitter, when measured specifically along the "free speech" and related concerns he expresses. A more free Twitter would be owned by a person or group with very few other interests that could be used as leverage.
Is this going to be the thing that gets Elon Musk off the hook for his billion dollar fine for backing out of the deal?
They had a breach and actively actively hid it for an extended period of time. Obviously both sides have good lawyers, but it's hard to see how this doesn't hurt Twitter in regards to the legal battle over the Musk deal unwinding
Tesla is a publicly traded company with shareholders.
Twitter is Musk’s private plaything.
Tesla using Twitter services could be a conflict of interest because Musk is CEO of both and could be using his position at Tesla to funnel public shareholder money into Twitter, aka his pocket.
Except Twitter doesn't need to be flexible in either case. Experts seem to agree the contract and law is on Twitters side. Musk signed and now owes the shareholders ~$44B.
The stuff about bots and whatever else is a distraction.
Sure, but twitter is not financialy stable and if it goes bankrupt then it's not Musk who decides what to do with a gifted x.com; it's used in a way that makes twitter the most value for the shareholders not the majority shareholeder. And as i said (with reguard to wework) if it's not gifted and with the knowledge of the abuses that a shareholder who is lending(and by lending i mean any convoluted contract that leaves Musk in control of it) a company a key asset can inflict on a company, then it's easy for minority shareholders to sue or even agencies to step in.
Do we know this? It's privately held, and Musk's made almost certainly false claims about such things (especially Twitter revenues post-purchase) in the past.
Hell, he got in trouble for false statements about Tesla, which is publicly held.
It's private now, yes. Owned by Musk, Saudi Arabian investors, Jack Dorsey is in with 1 billion (which is now more like 1/3 of a billion) Elon loaned 13 billion of high interest loan from banks, in a leveraged buyout, which means now Twitter owns that debt of 13 billion and paying interest on it of 1 billion a year.
I mean yeah, this is a pretty big own-goal for Musk, but someone made damn sure that purchase contract heavily favored Twitter with no wiggle room for Musk, and you can bet it wasn't Musk's lawyers. At minimum the Twitter exec team had the foresight to know Musk wasn't reliable and lock him down.
Musk owns 80-90% of Twitter. A few high-profile investors own the other 10-20%. The group of bankers have a huge lien on the company ($13 billion) but assuming that they are paid on time have no equity.
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