I think a better explanation is that Musk offered to buy Twitter as a cover for selling billions of dollars' worth of TSLA.
Look at this story: https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-sells-billions-of-dol... The headline is: "Elon Musk Sells $8.5 Billion of Tesla Shares After Deal to Buy Twitter"
Why does he need a cover? Because TSLA is way too overvalued. He has to know that it is overvalued. Tesla's market cap is double of Toyota, VW, Mercedes, BMW, GM, Honda, Ferrari and Volvo all combined! [1]. If you sell stock while knowing your company's stock is way too overvalued, you're fleecing unsophisticated investors. Pretending to buy Twitter provides a convenient cover.
Musk pretended that TSLA valuation is reasonable. Musk even called out Gates for shorting TSLA stock [2]. If he didn't have a cover then Musk would look like a hypocrite for selling TSLA.
In reality, both Musk and Gates sold TSLA, the only difference is that Musk sold stocks he owned, but Gates sold borrowed stocks. But Musk used buying Twitter as a cover, so he gets to pretend to be morally superior. Even though both men sold TSLA, according to Musk, Gates' sales means that he isn't serious about climate change [3].
[1] https://companiesmarketcap.com/automakers/largest-automakers...
[2] https://nypost.com/2022/05/31/elon-musk-calls-out-bill-gates...
[3] https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-shorting-tesla-wo...
> Is it fun for him? If he manages to walk away having spent only millions in financing fees, millions in legal fees and say $1 billion in termination fees, was it worth it? What did he get out of this? The guy really seems to like being on Twitter, and he did make himself the main character in Twitter's drama for months on end. That’s nice for him I guess. Also he made the lives of Twitter’s executives and employees pretty miserable; as a fellow Twitter addict I can kind of see the appeal of that? I always assume that “everyone who works at Twitter hates the product and its users,” and I suppose this is a case of the richest and weirdest user getting some revenge on the employees. He also gave himself an excuse to sell a bunch of Tesla stock near the highs. He maybe got an edit button too? Maybe that’s worth a billion dollars to him?
But for that to be the sole reason of the whole circus is conspiracy theory.
> Musk has buying Twitter as a cover
It's a very, very annoying/distracting cover, not to mention an expensive one.
It is hard to say how expensive it actually is… if he had sold overpriced Tesla stock without cover, could that lose be much more than - one billion termination fee?
Indeed he does. He has talked about this publicly in various interviews over the years. [1]
> Musk pretended that TSLA valuation is reasonable. Musk even called out Gates for shorting TSLA stock
Musk definitely really dislikes short sellers, no doubt about that. However that is different from pretending that TSLA valuation is reasonable.
--
[1] A decent example is the 2021 Kara Swisher interview, where he states I have literally gone on record and said that our stock price is too high. https://youtu.be/O1bZg7frOmI?t=2450
Uhm... Exactly this is mentioned in the article:
> He also gave himself an excuse to sell a bunch of Tesla stock near the highs.
So Levine already mentioned this.
Bezos has also sold off a massive chunk of assets?
There's nothing odd at all about shorting the market during this time.
Maybe he sold more shares than he needed while he was at it; like you'd withdraw a bit more cash than you really need at the ATM.
Then the market down turn sobered him up.
Simple.
It is possible of course, but unlikely. Musk doesn't seem to me as a person who might be surprised by this market crash, I heard him talking about the coming crash and how it will influence his plans before he started talking about buying twitter. My memory may be faulty but I think he mentioned it for example in December when justifying himself pushing SpaceX engineers to work harder to bring Raptor 2.
It seems more plausible for me that he tried to sell Tesla shares before the crash hit them.
Everyone seems to want to attribute it to some projected character fault in Musk, a chance to elevate their morality or intelligence higher than a famous rich guy.
Musks offer was strategically made before yearly earnings, when everyone posted bad earnings the market tanked.
Why waive due diligence then? What’s that saying don’t assume malice when it can be explained by ignorance.
Most people would do their due diligence under NDA for a while while negotiating prices before making an announcement, and before lining up funding.
Excuse me what ? He alwways said it was overvalued. I dont think anyone would have bat an eye if he had sold for no reason
He did? I thought he said more than once that he believes the stock price to be too high.
But what will the legacy of all this mess be? It's looking a lot like Howard Hughes, except that Hughes successfully monetized his stage presence. Elon has officially thrown in the towel, and spit in the face of his wider audience in the process.
IDK. Most people work their entire life not even getting to 1 million.
This is outright false and goes directly against his multiple stated instances of saying that the Tesla stock price is overvalued. Don't make things up to suit your biases.
This phrase gets thrown around a lot with dunning-kreuger confidence so I'd like to add context that it's not unusual for a market disruptor to be worth more than the sum of its legacy competitors - you are on a tech website related to startup incubator you should know this already.
I mean it will be overvalued if Toyota gets its act together - if the competition can produce reliable electric cars for the mass market. I suspect that this is not quite happening due to some real technical problems. A mass market electric car would need to handle some real problems with battery depreciation/range loss. I am not sure if that is happening, right now.
I found quite a range of opinions on battery depreciation, not quite sure who is right (never owned one):
https://www.carwow.co.uk/blog/do-electric-cars-depreciate#gr...
https://www.cars.com/articles/your-guide-to-ev-batteries-pre...
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/how-long-will-an-ev-battery-las...
But it is patently absurd for them to be higher than all other car companies combined. By any possible measure, they are far far smaller, and have far smaller prospects for growth, than the rest of the card industry put together.
The only place where Tesla has a lead is in sales of BEVs, where indeed they are selling more than the rest of the industry combined, except for some Chinese companies. However, BEVs are still a tiny part of the car market, and are likely to remain so for the next ten years at least.
Elon despises the SEC and he's now has exposed that the "less than 5%" of accounts are bots, that the SEC should have verified and accepted their methods for determining that number - and it should be adequate and reasonable to give a grounded-in-reality output, and it seems like it's a total bullshit statement.
I'd be surprised if Twitter stockholders don't sue the SEC.
He did the opposite of that. The Twitter CEO's explanations are quite believable, and Musk has not presented a single tiny shred of evidence against them. He hasn't even presented any methodology he used to arrive at the belief that the 5% is wrong - and note that his lawyers were careful to call it a belief only, since they know full well that claiming it as a fact would be indefensible in court.
The point of an acquisition agreement isn’t to give the buyer optionality to acquire another company, it’s to ensure the buyer honors its commitment to acquire another company during the period between the time the buyer agrees to acquire it, and the time is it able to close on taking ownership.
Maybe EM developed buyer’s remorse because of the decline in equity markets, or a belated realization that the CCP will have significant leverage on how he runs twitter, or just woke up the day after signing with that feeling you get when you realize you’ve knocked up Grimes not once but twice.
Just because EM wants an escape hatch, doesn’t make it so. There’s a pretty tight contract that says he needs to buy twitter, at the agreed price, using the committed financing he arranged. EM can try to retrade the price all day long, but then there’s still that pesky matter of a binding contract… to buy Twitter… at the price he agreed with the board… that doesn’t have a diligence out or an “ehhh changed my mind” termination provision.
For a variety of reasons, the board doesn’t have a tremendous number of appealing options (like none) but they have a strong contract that explicitly contains EM’s affirmative obligation to, y’know, buy Twitter. That fact has very little to do with his feeling.
Feel free to point out specific inaccuracies. I think it's pretty clear.
> Just because EM wants an escape hatch, doesn’t make it so
Yes, never suggested it's legally permissible.
> affirmative obligation
This is armchair speculation. Even if the text might seem to be clear in outsider interpretation, this is a matter solely for the courts to determine and both sides will have an opportunity to make their points across. I stand by prediction of the board ending up settling this case. It will get obviously challenged in court, but it's not "wrong" in the sense of predicting an outcome.
This is very important for me as I need to find out if I can just walk away from all the student loans, car notes, and mortgages I may have entered into, as it’s no longer convenient for me, and I would really appreciate if I could make that my counter party’s problem
This whole thing actually creates a golden bridge eventually for the twitter board to retreat on.
The board now has an obligation to sue, otherwise they are breaching their fiduciary duty. However, almost all shareholders will realise that a 2-3 year litigation at the end of which Elon might be forced to buy, is a long way away. Better to settle for a lower price now. Both shareholders and Elon will see this. The board just needs to demonstrate they are fighting for shareholders.
I predict in 3-4 months the board will offer a shareholder vote with a lower price, and shareholders will realise that it's way better to take that deal than wait for litigation.
If you don't believe he'll be forced to pay, you should sell and/or short until it's at whatever you think the right market value for a stock of Twitter ought to be.
And wherever the price is between those two is a direct function of what experts believe the probability of each outcome is. It's like a massive betting market on a legal case.
How do I bet on no outcome one way or another for many many years? If there's one thing I know about the US legal system it is giant corporations battling each other takes years and years to resolve.
"If you don't believe he'll be forced to pay..."
Those are two very different statements.
I absolutely believe the court can compel Elon to satisfy the contract he's gotten himself into. I don't necessarily believe the court will do so. Specific performance isn't a popular result in those courts, apparently. That being said,...
"...you should sell and/or short until it's at whatever you think the right market value for a stock of Twitter ought to be."
Yeah, no. If I thought like that, I'd have shorted Tesla long ago. I also know that "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
I wouldn't call the hordes on Robinhood "experts": they are the marks that Elon plays like a fiddle on Twitter.
Wasn’t Google Ads 80% fake clicks on some studies? It won’t be surprising Twitter Ads is actually worse. There is so zero incentive to clean it up and so many shady reasons to do it.
They're still charging advertisers for those clicks.
On then other hand, bot accounts help get bozos elected, encourage mass shootings, etc.
Come to think of it, I don't think it depends on your perspective. Bot accounts are a much bigger issue than click fraud.
Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32027341 - July 2022 (1361 comments)
The rich play by different rules and the law lets them.
If the rest of us did the same we would have to pay ridiculous fines and/or spent time behind bars.
Is this different to total percentage of false or spam accounts? The monetizable daily active users seems like a very specific subpopulation of total twitter accounts.
Musk knows this but still knowingly confuses them to try to trick people into thinking Twitter is lying about that 5% number (since it's pretty obvious there are many bots on twitter)
His reputation as a sufficiently reliable counterparty is gone.
It's likely that this will be the most expensive manic episode any individual has suffered.
a tide of hatred turned against him
Musk correctly reacted by withdrawing and not wanting any of this
you can keep the social media and deal with your hatred yourselves or your therapist
- Tesla plants challenges worldwide (From China to Berlin via Texas)
- Cybertruck ever postponing release date?
- SolarCity and the dissmissed promises
- Neuralink: Simply read the Wikipedia's entry [1]
- Hyperloop (or is it hyperflop)
- Boring company (more and more video demos) nothing is done...
Recently USA has a president that was following his impoolsive, late night tweets, by pushing his staff to form them as a new policy...
My guess is cybertruck will be DOA. Anyone who wants an EV Truck is likely going to order an F-150 Lightning - looks like every other F-150, F-150 is the best selling automobile in the US.
Once other auto makers ramp up production, Tesla cars will continue to be a niche luxury product with some gimmicky features.
Or maybe that was because the overall stock market was down a lot. Meta being down 20$ is about the same as the S&P 500.
Also it is obviously untrue! Companies advertise on Twitter because it sells products!
lol Twitter ads are notoriously expensive. It's mostly big companies buying them to build awareness, not to move product.
You don’t know Musk, or the backend, or anything at all besides what the media tells you and that isn’t 1/10th the whole story.
I get why people wanna talk about it, just not be absolute “well I know this for a fact” smugness that most of the comments here have.
The reality is NONE of you actually KNOW anything and won’t until history determines the victor and you learn some more of that side.
And some people are certainly qualified to opine on these issues, particularly Matt Levine, who has worked as an M&A lawyer and investment banker.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312522...
> Musk cannot get out of the deal just because one of Twitter’s representations is false. He still has to close the deal unless the representation is false and it would have a “material adverse effect” on Twitter. This is a famously under-defined term but it generally needs to be a pretty catastrophic effect. If the bots are 6% of mDAUs, whatever. If the bots are 75% of mDAUs and Twitter has been knowingly misleading its advertisers, and Musk can expose that scam and advertisers flee and Twitter faces legal trouble for its fraud, then, sure, material adverse effect.
As to whether there is any evidence of a false representation (not even addressing material adverse effect due to that false representation):
> The only basis for the claim is that “preliminary analysis by Mr. Musk’s advisors of the information provided by Twitter to date causes Mr. Musk to strongly believe that the proportion of false and spam accounts included in the reported mDAU count is wildly higher than 5%.” Notice that Ringler does not say that the analysis shows that the bots are “wildly higher than 5%” of mDAUs: That would be a factual claim that, I suspect, Musk’s advisers know is false. They make only the subjective claim that Musk “strongly believes” it.
And then, perhaps the better grounds for Musk to prevail:
> The second pretext is: Twitter is not giving Musk enough information about the bot problem. This is a better pretext, for technical legal reasons, which we have also discussed previously. In the closing conditions to the merger, representations are qualified by “material adverse effect”; just finding that a representation is false would not give Musk the right to terminate the deal unless it caused an MAE. But covenants are qualified by “all material respects”: In the merger agreement, Twitter promised to do certain things between signing and closing, and it has to do those things, whether or not there would be a material adverse effect from not doing them. So if Musk can prove that Twitter hasn’t complied with its obligations, he can get out of the deal.
the thing he's pretending to ditch the deal for was the thing he allegedly wanted to fix
It seems like the purchase price should be of the order of 6% less in that case.
6% of $44 billion is not a trivial amount of money.
Normally “is the mDAU figure correct” is the kind of thing you answer before you sign the merger agreement and lock in your purchase price.
Also note that the baseline in SEC filings was 5% bots, so 6% is only 1pp higher. The claim was never that it was zero.
Of course, this is all a moot point, because what an actual businessman (as opposed to a con artist) would do, if they were concerned the bot stats might be inaccurate, is make sure the agreement had specific terms in it as to what would happen if it was found to be inaccurate.
That's not what his contract says.
Either the bots are pretty close to the 5% figure Twitter says (and 6% is definitely pretty close), and Elon has to buy at the figure he specified, or they're enough higher to have a significant impact on ad revenue, and Elon doesn't have to buy at all.
Musk is x y z. Oh my god, did you see the tweet he sent out!?! I just hate Musk, blah blah blah. He's such a terrible human. This one time he called a person a really bad name. - That's the type of person that reads Musk's Twitter acquisition attempt the way the article is.
I don't care much about Musk one way or another, but this is not a complicated context and the author is plain wrong.
What happened is the market for hyper overvalued stocks has crashed. He was faced with the scenario of paying double for Twitter vs what it was really worth. Remove the Musk prop and the stock collapses. Next up, the stock is heading south of $30 / share. It might be worth taking over for $20-$25 / share at most.
Musk didn't want to pay $20 billion more for Twitter than he had to, even for him that was a bridge too far. Particularly while his own paper bubble fortune is just as at risk of implosion as the rest.
It was really, really, really dumb timing. That was Musk's actual issue.
Musk doesn’t want a turd.
Twitter, essentially made a deal with the devil (from their perspective). Despite being initially opposed to this deal, they now has to sue to try and make it happen, because I suspect if it doesn’t “south of $30” is going to be more like “around $20” and there are a whole bunch of folks that might get interested in a takeover at that level with far more villain potential than Musk.
He makes no sense.
Twitter gets free exposure from all the news and a boost in reputation if only 5% of users are bots. Is there room for growth? I have the impression that Twitter is for information junkies who all should already have heard of Twitter.
As Matt Levine likes to complain, not even Twitter’s own board and executives seem to use or like the product. It is a hostile and unappealing environment to most people.
He is rich but doesn't usually like burning money.
Twitter is at best a distraction for Musk, at worst it could be his downfall.
I think he did it with bitcoins when it declared Tesla will accept Bitcoin payments on the same basis of ordinary payments. Just later he abruptly dismissed the whole thing because the operation was terminated. In the meantime I guess he just acquired a lot of bitcoins before the public announcement and just sold them when the price was much higher.
I think that stock market and Bitcoin market are easily gullible by wealthy people because a lot of people investing are inexperienced and are easily influenced by press communication without ground truth basis.
It’s clear that the offer Elon got stuck with has an unrealistic price at this point (and Elon just want a reason to get out of the deal), just like it’s clear that Twitter’s management is incompetent in the last few years.
I just hope that there will be a lawsuit with juicy details so that I can get my popcorn, but I believe the 2 parties will settle.
He tried to act badass but came out looking like a dumbass.
Everything since is his effort to get out of this (which he will…one of the nice things about having a lot of money is that it’s very hard to lose, no matter how illegal whatever you’re doing is), but is also trying to pretend he didn’t do something really really dumb.
I see absolutely no reason to help Elon rewrite history especially when he could very well paid the penalty and walked away like he contractually agreed to, which would have ended the matter right there.
But that's not how it works. That's why we have contracts, and covenants, etc.: it's so that, if conditions change, one party cannot say "oops, sorry, changed my mind" and walk.
(Also, the offer "Elon got stuck with" is his own, and even bears his childish signature of a weed joke.)
He should definitely pay a fine.
You can't walk into a situation and cause major chaos - literally executive turnover, stock going crazy, all sorts of turmoil - and then walk away on bad faith and excuses.
Also - he does not have unlimited resources. He literally cannot afford this deal right now.
Of course they can drag each other to the bottom until one gives up. I doubt Musk will and Twitter might have existential issues if it doesn't get bought with rumors related to their user base quality.
We see in states where such an expectation is not present, that it becomes an enormous invisible drag on all business activity and degrades the civic functioning of society.
One of the crowning achievements of Western Liberalism was the concept of "rule of law" and that there would exist an impartial, powerful judiciary independent of political power that could bring massive resources to bear to enforce contracts.
But there are always exceptions written in the contracts and Elon would be foolish not to spend a few million to try to trigger an exception to renegotiate the contract. It just makes business sense.
(Not that they've ever been perfect, but I feel like we're on the decline and they need tending).
It’s like selling a house and buyer makes an offer with no contingencies.
Sure, you can sue them to close the deal but the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. Does Twitter want to be locked into some multi-year court battle?
They’ll settle and the news will move onto something else.
Delaware courts are pretty fast. The court case could conceivably be finished before the end of this year.
LOL, I'm sure the juice will be worth the squeeze on a $44 billion dollar house.
That really depends on the offer you accepted (A), the current value of the house (B), the cost of litigation (C), and the price you put on your time and mental energy (D). If A > B + C + D, it makes sense to force the buyer to close. And in most cases, you're relying on the buyer to close in order to be able to close on the house you're moving to so you may have no choice.
It’s a profitable venture for twitter
Those 44 billion USD may be worth a lot less in 2024 or 2025.
It's a huge distraction for Twitter and probably won't be worth it in the long run. I expect a settlement with Elon paying some cash as a breakup fee.
I'm not buying that; it's not like he couldn't just change his position on a whim. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
It's like American capitalism has a big vulnerability and Musk is hacking it.
Capitalism always needs to be properly regulated to work properly, but it quickly cracks when some people work hard to hack it and cause problems.
As always, don't hate the criminals, just hate the game.
You’re welcome.
By imaginging them as different, you are giving them great power and throwing away your own. You are as smart as they are.
Imagine some lowly millionaire putting a bid in for a piece of land / cottage he wants, and the karma that can come from that. Same thing, different scale.
Not necessarily, but those are the ones that you will hear the most about.
No, seriously. Just keep finding better ones.
Twitter says only 5% of its active users are bots.
Anyone who has paid attention to say Joe Bidens follower count[1] would put it closer to 50%
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10829675/Almost-hal...
Bloomberg says there is no evidence of this... yeah, personally I dont really see any evidence of twitter having more than 200 or 300 million real users, and only a small fraction of those will be active. "Maybe" if they werent completely blocked in China and Russia it would be possible to believe there is more.
When a cursory glance of twitter accounts shows its only a small number of American celebrities and a few global politicians that still use twitter instead of telegram.
The onus is on twitter to prove that 250million number, and Musks lawyers are saying they fell well short of doing so.
A bloomberg hit piece on Musk claiming Musk didnt show it isnt true wont save twitter, and they've been in terminal decline even before they banned Trump.
It's bad, clearly, when this has negative externalities. A better Elon would stop himself from hurting people with these adventures - but, I also think it's possible that without this trait, whatever you call it, Elon wouldn't have made the progress in the areas he has. On net I think he's still done a tremendous amount.
Let's stop glorifying the personality - when has that ever worked out well? The US will get along fine without Musk (maybe better without this cult of personality).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_Production_Act_of_1950
There is zero indication that he would do such a thing as he has no history of doing so. Elon spares no breath praising NASA any time he is asked about NASA.
The fact that Musk is working in such bad faith here — that he seems so unconcerned with law and the contract he signed — cuts both ways. On the one hand, it will certainly annoy a Delaware chancellor; Delaware likes to think of itself as a stable place for corporate deals, with predictable law and binding contracts, and Musk’s antics undermine that. On the other hand it might intimidate a Delaware chancellor: What if the court orders Musk to close the deal and he says no? They’re not gonna put him in Chancery jail. The guy is pretty contemptuous of legal authority; he thinks he is above the law and he might be right. A showdown between Musk and a judge might undermine Delaware corporate law more than letting him weasel out of the deal would.
I can't believe people are taking this very silly statement seriously. This is utter nonsense. There are remedies for people who disobey court orders. Having assets makes you more vulnerable to a court's authority because you have something to lose.
If a court orders specific performance and he doesn't do it then he's liable and the court will take his assets to compensate.
Is Levine seriously suggesting that US courts don't have the authority to impose financial penalties, find liability, and seize assets? This is such an absurd thing to say it's hard to find a way to charitably respond.
If enough money makes you untouchable by the law, then our system is simply broken.
On a practical level, every large financial institution with dollar assets (I mean this literally) has a far greater vested interest in maintaining a productive relationship with the Chancery than they do with Musk.
On a political level, could easily see the Delaware governor getting a kick out of sending the state police to arrest Musk for contempt, impound his assets.
Then again, Musk is a pretty good gambler.
If they don’t make an example of Musk (if he so deserves it), the same thing will happen and Delaware will become less useful for corporations.
This is completely wrong, right? The evidence might not be terrific but it's definitely more than a whisper.
Of all the funny things I have read this week this takes the cake, Biden will not allow him to get away with it, not a joke.
Link: https://www.bloomberg.com/account/newsletters/money-stuff
It sure appears that Elons is just balking, but what is far more likely is that he has uncovered some deep Twitter bullshit and he plans to unveil it in court. Forced to air the dirty laundry by the court, he avoids defamation suits.
Elon is extremely intelligent. Not perfect, not omniscient, maybe he screwed up? Or maybe he has a lot more info than any of us internet loons at the moment?
I have no idea how you can claim that that is far more likely. You think it is more likely that Elon is going to expose the numbers Twitter reports to the SEC as off by an order of magnitude than Elon just not wanting to follow through with this deal?
EVEN IF the numbers reported were off by a factor of 10, this would also have to cause advertisers to pull out! The revelations you claim Elon might make have to have material effect on the value of Twitter for them to make a difference in this impending court case. Yeah, it’s possible, I guess? But it’s definitely not more likely!
Think about it this way: what could Elon possibly reveal that would make advertisers pull out? They advertise on Twitter and make money already! Why stop now??
Given this and previous behaviour it seems pretty reasonable to assume that Musk was doing it for the lolz and to get attention as "the savior of free speech".
It's useful to note that after he signed the contract the market decided he wasn't serious about it. That's the closest we have to an objective judgement on Musk's intentions.
What is your calculation/reasoning that that is far more likely? How did you come to that?
Unfortunately, the time to do that was BEFORE he signed the contract. He didn't have to sign the contract without due diligence.
> Or maybe he has a lot more info than any of us internet loons at the moment?
Let me know how that turns out. Maybe the horse will sing. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jlawler/aue/sig.html
Everything I've seen about Musk suggests that he is not particularly smart, but he is audacious. The hyperloop, the claims about autonomous driving, the boring company nonsense, and all sorts of other Tesla-related claims have all come out to be massive disappointments.
If 64,000 people bet on a coin flipping heads 16 times in a row, one of them is going to make it. That one is Elon Musk.
I cannot legally name names but this happens all the time.
Twitter, the banks lending him money, and the other investors Elon lined up are all trying to make the transaction go forward.
So the answer is clearly that yes, Elon musk is "allowed" to buy Twitter if he actually wants to. He may even have to buy it based on the agreement he signed even if he no longer wants to.
One past example doesn't make a hobby, and I wonder if SEC interference had any impact small or large on the privatization failing. Not to add to the defense to Musk, but deals fall through all the time when scrutiny is applied to them, whether exterior or interior.
The "SEC interference", as you called it, came long after he had his Nelson moment in that case. (A more accurate name for it might be "SEC slap-on-the-wrist", because it was both completely ineffective and entirely deserved.)
What a silly thing to say. Of course he would; I'd also risk $20 (~1/200th of my assets, like $1b is for Musk) on a joke, especially if I knew I'd almost certainly never lose that much.
https://nairametrics.com/2022/04/28/twitter-says-it-inflated...
edit: Not an Elon fan BTW. Just don't appreciate this Levine's axe-grinding masquerading as impartial legal analysis.
When Facebook acquired whatsapp, I remember reading that it wasn't the tech per se that facebook really wanted. It was the daily active users. Whatsapp had (still has? dunno) a pretty big userbase. That was the where a lot of the value lay for facebook, or so I understand.
So, if daily active users are important to the value of the property, do we believe twitter's SEC filing estimates of <5% bots? Musk doesn't, or hasn't been convinced by what he has seen.
That really does seem like a legit reason to abort the deal. Twitter is representing <5% bots. Musk thinks that's a wildly optimistic estimate & is prepared to call bullshit. Seems fair to me.
A more cynical view might be that Musk is simply looking to lower the price. Exposure of Twitter's bot problems in a court might not be very good for the share price. Just having Musk pull out (9 kids, he never pulls out) probably dips the share price. So, isn't it all good leverage to bring the price down?
The timing makes no sense for bots to be a legit explanation. Elon is just a troll.