Elon Musk took on Twitter on Thursday with a $41 billion cash offer
Elon Musk took aim on Twitter on Thursday with a $41 billion cash offer, after the Tesla CEO said the social media giant needs to go private for the social media giant to grow and become a platform for free speech, Reuters reported.
"Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it," Musk, who is already the company's second largest shareholder, said in a letter to Twitter's board on Wednesday.
The proposal was made public in a regulatory filing on Thursday.
The billionaire entrepreneur's offering price of $54.20 per share represents a 38% premium to Twitter's close on April 1, the last trading day before his 9.1% stake in the social media platform was made public.
Musk declined an invitation to join Twitter's board this week after disclosing his stake, a move that analysts said as a board seat that his intention to acquire would reduce his stake to just under 15%. would be limited to.
He told Twitter that it was his best and last offer and said he would reconsider his investment if the board rejects it.
"Since making my investment, I now realize that the company will neither develop nor meet this social imperative in its current form," Musk said in his letter to Twitter chairman Brett Taylor. That needs to change as a company."
Musk, who calls himself a free-speech absolutist, has been critical of the social media platform and its policies, and recently ran a poll on Twitter asking users whether they believed the principles of free speech. follows.
A source told Reuters that Twitter would review the proposal with advice from Goldman Sachs and Wilson Soncini Goodrich & Rosati.
Musk said US investment bank Morgan Stanley was acting as a financial advisor to his proposal. However, he did not specify how he would finance the transaction if it went ahead.
According to a Forbes tally, Musk is the richest person in the world. - Reuters