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.
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.
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.
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 assume the accusation is that Musk has a Twitter account where the tweets get replicated to the business section of most media outlets globally at the moment.
He also has a history of dropping financial information through Twitter (the taking Tesla private tweet). Plus the rabid groupies stacked with Crypto fans.
I'm not sure how tweeting something that pumps the Bitcoin price, and the selling a bunch plays out legally. But he didn't seem too bothered about it in relation to Tesla stock.
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.
The SEC filings are a matter of public record, which is part of why we call 'public' companies public in the first place: Twitter is - and Musk is as well - bound to do a lot of this out in the open because it affects the price of a listed stock.
Worth noting that the date of buying these shares is March 14th, and the date he started rather unsubtly tweeting about Twitter's approach to free speech is March 25th. So to be clear, anyone who thought that Musk's actions are the result of the twitter poll he ran has clearly been misled.
Not well versed in any of this, but could this be Musk just toying around with Twitter and/or him bluffing to get a reaction? Does he have any legal obligation to go through with the purchase if Twitter was open to it?
I think Twitter is owned by a holding company controlled by Musk. I think he had at least two holding companies, “X Holdings I” and “X Holdings II”, with the later a subsidiary of the former, and the acquisition was legally a merger between Twitter and the subsidiary. That’s a quite typical way to legally structure acquisitions.
I’m not sure exactly how the coinvestors fit in the picture, but I expect they (or more likely their own holding companies) own minority stakes in the parent holding company. The debt is probably the parent company’s also, although Musk may have personally guaranteed much of it.
Also, probably even the parent holding company is not directly owned by Musk. Probably owned by one or more trusts he controls.
This is objectively true, since every other tech company's stock prices dropped dramatically. Twitter's stock price was pinned because Musk made a commitment.
> more information came to light during the acquisition process which further changed his view of the company's value
This is objectively false, he misread Twitter's quarterly statements and didn't understand what mDAU meant, he wasted months and millions of dollars dragging Twitter through court, only to be forced to follow through on his commitment or get a worse judgment from the court.
If you know that, then presumably Musk knows it too, and knew it when he made the offer, no? If it's true, then Musk knew it. He signed a contract to buy Twitter anyhow, so.
Twitter is a public company (and has been for 9 years), and has maintained the 5% mDAU disclaimer in its required annual reports for years. I don't know off-hand how long it's been doing so, but probably at least 4 or 5 years.
The allegation is saying not only that Twitter has been lying about that number--for years, on documents that land it in legal hot water if it's been lying--but that it was doing so specifically so that Musk would buy Twitter at an inflated price. The insane part is really that specific intent, not the lying about the numbers.
First you'll have to show where Twitter made that claim.
Your phrasing here has been Musk's phrasing on this subject, which is interesting, as it's a different metric than what Twitter files publicly with the SEC.
Hell, he got in trouble for false statements about Tesla, which is publicly held.
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