How much has Elon Musk offered to pay for Twitter?
The Tesla CEO has sent a letter to the social media site’s chairman, offering to buy 100% of Twitter shares just weeks after his holdings were made public.
Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter for around $41 billion in the latest twist in the relationship between the billionaire and the social media giant.
Musk has offered to purchase the entirety of shares in Twitter at a price of $54.20 per share, which represents a 38% premium on top of Twitter’s stock price as of the 1 April close. That was the last day of trading before Musk’s 9% share in Twitter was revealed.
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“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,” Musk wrote, in a letter to Bret Taylor, Twitter chairman.
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“As a result, I am 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 continued. “My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.”
Elon Musk had recently left the Twitter board of directors
Earlier this month, Musk’s 9.2% stake in Twitter was made public, resulting in the share price soaring by 27%. It was also revealed that the Tesla CEO would join the company’s board of directos, but Musk himself later reversed those plans, reportedly due to concerns about his own social media activities.
Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter’s director of ML Ethics, Transparency, and Accountability, expressed relief that Musk would not be added as a director.
Chowdhury wrote on Twitter: “Twitter has a beautiful culture of hilarious constructive criticism, and I saw that go silent because of his minions attacking employees.”
Musk has more than 81 million followers on Twitter, making him one of the site’s most popular accounts. However in the days after his significant stake in the platform was made public he posted a series of tweets, seeming to joke about future directions for the social media giant.
He asked followers if they felt that Twitter would benefit from an ‘edit button’ for tweets, and suggested that he could change the site’s name to ‘Titter’.
Today’s news suggests that Musk has his sights set on claiming much more control over the future of Twitter than initially thought. It remains to be seen how the company will respond to Musk’s very public overtures, and how it will affect the relationship with a key stakeholder.