If the world is Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, Elon Musk is Veruca Salt, and his golden egg is Twitter: The billionaire is really out here now trying to buy Twitter with a massive cash offer of $41 billion.
On Thursday, Musk shared the SEC filing indicating his intentions with Twitter on, you guessed it, his personal Twitter account. In a letter to the board that can be read within the filing, the Tesla founder declares that he “invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.”
In the event you somehow forgot, Musk is currently the company’s second-largest shareholder after buying 9.2% stake in Twitter earlier this month.
“However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company,” wrote Musk, adding he’s “offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced.”
He called his offer “my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”
“Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it,” he said.
Oh good. As if that hellscape site could not get worse... Perhaps Elon will rename it something incredibly stupid, like just a math equation or a Lord of the Rings character.
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