Musk Proposes To Proceed With Twitter Deal at $54.20 a Share - Bloomberg (bloomberg.com) 302
Bloomberg News reports: Elon Musk is proposing to buy Twitter for the original offer price of $54.20 a share, Bloomberg News reports. Musk made the proposal in a letter to Twitter, according to the people who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information.
Wait, what? (Score:3)
So that hissy fit was all for nothing?
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Re: Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course he got lucky, right place, right time, right idea, the first 2 are all luck the last isn't but Paypal isn't exactly genius, if visa just got its act together and did challenge response so people don't have random web sites there credit card details Paypal would not be needed.
Its a mixture of luck and ability but a lot of it is clearly luck.
Re: Wait, what? [Haggling joke.] (Score:2)
"Would you let Twitter phuck you [or your mind] for $1 million a share?"
"I guess so."
"How about for $54.20 a share?"
"What kind of fool do you think I am?"
"We've already established that. Now we're just haggling about the price."
Obligatory? But apparently the penalty for breaching the contract is more than Musk can afford.
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Yes, lucky in the same way that 99% of all other hard-working, risk-taking businesses are lucky and successful. Lucky like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Bezos, etc... Those are just the high rollers, but it applies to any business owner.
So in other words, he's lucky just like every other hard-working and high-risk business owner? What's your point again, because your post just seems like jealousy and spite over some hardworking guy who made himself successful.
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> lucky in the same way that 99% of all other hard-working, risk-taking businesses are lucky and successful ... What's your point again
That luck is a big part of it for all those, Musk too. It's not a put down, it's a reframing. Every ordinary one, standing on the shoulders of every other ordinary one, kind of thing. At least that's how I interpret it.
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His parents were wealthy and paid for his education, as well as helping with early business ventures.
He risked some of his wealth, not enough to affect his quality of life.
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Credit for what? That guy proves time and time again that he knows fuck all. If you take a look at his "projects", you will notice that he was incredibly lucky.
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Reportedly that was only worth $50k or so which while high in South Africa would be like owning a summer home in the US
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>Seriously, where did the times go when people who had money actually did something other than having a shitload of luck to get it?
Umm - they never existed? Is this a trick question?
Throughout history the number one way to get a shitload of money has been to be born into a family with a shitload of money. As pure a case of luck as possible.
The second most effective way has always been to subjugate the masses and steal the majority of the wealth created through their hard work.
Most other methods have be
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Pretty much this. At this point, I can only assume that he's acting like a 5 year old that found a credit card.
Seriously, where did the times go when people who had money actually did something other than having a shitload of luck to get it?
I'm right up there among those calling many of Musk's recent decisions idiotic. Not to mention crazy and probably heavily influenced by him being high. We do need to give credit where it's due though. He did make good business decisions with Tesla and SpaceX. Tesla, he bought control of for a song and he did successfully build it up. SpaceX, he also spent very little money from the start, went after the best people to run it, and let them do their thing. Those were pretty good choices from an entrepreneuria
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Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
Translation, he has no out.
I doubt he would have been forced to pay $54.20 for it... he probably should have... but it probably wouldn't go that far.
But he would have been forced to pay a substantial penalty for screwing around and hurting the valuation so much. So given the choice of paying $X to get out of the deal vs $54B to get Twitter he chose to buy Twitter.
I suspect his mental state over realizing his choice had something to do with his ridiculous Twitter poll proposing to give Russia victory in Ukraine [twitter.com].
Note, if this letter does in fact exists the court case is done. He can't really change his mind again and claim he was defrauded.
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There was no other option, he would've had to pay $54.20 per share if he lost. Otherwise only if Twitter wanted to settle for something else but there's no way they would.
And he'd absolutely lose because the shit coming out now from discovery is pretty spicy. He had some shady conversations with a protonmail account where they agreed to "take it to a more secure channel", and he failed to disclose all of this.
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It's probably because his embarrassing private communications are coming out due to the lawsuit.
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The Court in cases like these doesn't go, "oh you know what, $20 is a more fair price. You can have that", because it isn't about what is fair. The Delaware Court of Chancery is about contracts.
If his lawyers have said, "you're going to lose..." forgoing the rest of the process and just doing it is the right move.
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> Translation, he has no out.
The agreement he signed was extremely seller-friendly.
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I think he realizes if he went to court, he could be hurt far worse.
Musk has been screwing over discovery - enough so that the judge is pretty pissed at him for failing to hand over the discovery disclosure information. Enough so that Twitter enlarged its request to Musk's friends and associates to get that information as well.
Twitter had evidence Musk was still hiding information, and even applied for the ultimate in civil penalties - negative inference.
Negative inference is a co
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Informative)
He's on another of his week long drug fuelled benders at the moment. Yesterday he proposed Ukraine accept Russia's demands of permanently giving up Crimea and remaining neutral (aka defenceless against further Russian aggression).
Most of Twitter turned on him for spouting such stupidity at a time where multiple Russian fronts are in collapse (Kharkiv and Kherson) and Zelensky humiliated him with a counter poll where 79% called it out.
So given he's on one of his drug fuelled benders right now I wouldn't be surprised to find out he's changed his mind and decided to buy it just so he can ban Zelensky or something, because that's how pathetic and petty Musk is.
Re: Wait, what? (Score:3, Interesting)
He seems to be surrounding himself with right-wingers who are slowly corrupting his brain. Seems to have accelerated since COVID. Just a matter of time before he totally ditches even claiming to be a humanist.
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Easy, Sanders (or one of the other far left leaning candidates) until after the primaries (that Biden won). Then of course they voted for Biden rather than Trump.
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...to show how you understand reality and nuance
...because that's all the left can actually do
Tell me more about nuance.
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Remember, the leftwing thought Biden was their best of the best.
*NOBODY* thought Biden was the best. The entire appeal of Biden was that moderate Republicans would be willing to vote for him.
Biden was the low upside, high probability of winning choice.
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Foolish. You can't allow the fascists to win while you clean up your own house 1st.
The democrats are a bunch of cats which are usually infighting more (or licking themselves) than trying to gain territory against the republican dogs; who operate in a pack and loyally follow their biggest sociopaths... well, maybe more of a dog+cow hybrid...some more herded cows than following dogs.
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Remember, the leftwing thought Biden was their best of the best.
Please, our Left wing wasnt interested in Biden at all. He won as the moderate that he is on a stability platform. After 4 years of Trump instability the idea of a return to the stability and normalcy of the Obama years seemed nice to people.
(No, insulting me doesn't work, because that's all the left can actually do, so I expect it)
Hahaha, how full of yourself you are. I remember the time you posted all over Slashdot a multipage essay you wrote explaining how UBI could never succeed. I imagine you were gambling on no one actually reading the lengthy thing as when I did I found that you had made up
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Remember, the leftwing thought Biden was their best of the best. And Kamala wasn't even good enough to last the first primary.
By and large, I don't think so. Most leftists know that Biden is not the best of the best. He only wins by comparison to Trump. He's the establishment candidate who is basically a moderate Republican from back before the Republicans basically collectively went crazy and the lunatic fringe in their party took over.
Most leftists are considerably more progressive than Biden.
(No, insulting me doesn't work, because that's all the left can actually do, so I expect it)
Have you examined the lack of self-awareness in that statement? Maybe try not to put words in other people's mouths so much.
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Literally nobody in the progressive wing of the Democratic Party thought "Biden was their best of the best." That's why Bernie was running again. People in the Democratic Party at large thought Biden was their best opportunity out of the available candidates to get centrists and moderates into the voting booth in order to kick the incumbent the fuck out. And that's it.
Biden is nobody's ideal candidate. Nobody's. But he's a big step up from the guy we had.
And then you have the gall to accuse others of n
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You're feeding an obvious troll. My conclusion about Ukraine:
Ukraine never posed any existential threat to Russia, though the Ukrainian government had good reason to be pretty suspicious about some of the Russians living in Ukraine. Russia has frequently posed existential threats to Ukraine, though it never quite managed to stamp out Ukraine.
However a Russian defeat in Ukraine has certainly become an existential threat to Putin.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Actually they do. Several hundred years track record of stopping wars, especially nuclear ones.
Yes, because appeasing Nazi Germany was oh so successful in stopping the only war in history where nukes were ever seriously on the table and then subsequently used.
Appeasement has never worked - especially given Ukraine tried appeasement in 2014 and despite Ukraine freezing the front as Russia demanded all those years, Russia decided to invade anyway.
Appeasing Russia is code for giving Russia time to re-group, re-build, and re-invade. Meanwhile Russia commits war crime after war crime against the civilian populace of the area they hold. If you're pro-appeasement in this war, you're not anti-war, you're pro-Russian genocide.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who doesn't think Russia would invade again once they recovered and built up their military is an idiot.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)
What corner?
Putin started the war and can stop anytime.
Ukrane is not going to invade Russia (internationally recognized borders).
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's really what he's counting on though, that his threat of the use of nukes means we'll appease. But there's a few points here that make that questionable:
1) The Russian air force barely showed up to this war, hundreds of aircraft were simply missing from theatre. Russia has 273 Su-24 ground attack aircraft on paper - but where are they? That kind of force could've turned this war. Other air frames like the 90 MiG-31s which should've been able to obtain air superiority have too similarly been missing. As such it's pretty clear that the majority of Russia's nuclear warheads simply could not be delivered in the event of war; they'd be relying on easily shot down bombers without sufficient fighter escort and even then only have capacity for a tiny fraction of potential warheads to be delivered. That leaves those deployable by ICBMs, most of which are fairly low yield. Russia doesn't even have enough nuclear firepower there to destroy even half the US, much less its allies. Then even that assumes their nuclear arsenal is in a better state than their airforce, it's probably not; it's likely Russia's true deployable nuclear warheads against the West are fairly low and relatively low yield.
In contrast the West's nuclear arsenal is both functional and deployable; between stealth aircraft like the B2 and now B21 and the fact Russia has lost half its air defences in Ukraine, it's clear West could unleash thousands of warheads on Russia to Russia's low hundreds on the West. On top of this, the West has viable nuclear missile defences; Russian cruise missiles would be unlikely to penetrate European or American IADS, and many ballistic missiles could be put out of action with THAAD.
In practice this means it's clear Russia engaging in nuclear war with the West whilst killing millions in the West, would still ultimately leave the West firmly standing and Russia completely defeated. It'd be suicide without achieving MAD. Whilst Putin plays the madman, the whole reason he's avoided hitting Western arms shipments to Ukraine in the West is because he's absolutely scared shitless of pulling NATO into the war; every time NATO has called his bluff he's backed down. The same appears true now with nukes.
2) The second point I'd make is that even if he goes nuclear against Ukraine, there's two ways of doing it; you either go all in and destroy Ukraine which leaves Russia with no nuclear arsenal to defend against the West (and potentially even China), the second way is you go small scale as a fear tactic. The problem with the latter is that a small tactical nuke sounds scary, but Russia's losing so badly and the fighting is so close up that it wouldn't make any tactical difference on the battlefield in practice. He could hit a Ukrainian city and murder thousands of civilians with a tactical nuke but that won't win him the war either. In all cases it's worth again reiterating that NATO has said any use of nukes by Russia will result in NATO destroying Russia's Black Sea fleet, and any forces in Crimea/Ukraine which they could do within days. I think now we've seen how much of a non-threat Russia is conventionally NATO isn't bluffing here either; they know they could finish Russia in Ukraine in response to nuclear weapons use with negligible losses.
3) There's a suggestion Russia could carry out a nuclear test in the Black Sea to send a message. I also think this is unlikely; it'd mean radiation on Turkish beaches, a NATO member state and would absolutely guarantee a Turkish, and likely a NATO response to destroy Russia's Black Sea fleet at a minimum.
4) All this assumes the choice is in Putin's hands. At the end of the day he doesn't pull the trigger; there's a whole chain of military leadership, through to people arming the weapon, through to deploying it, that have to be willing to accept not just their potential annihilation, but their family's potential annihilation and everyone they know once they deploy that weapon. That's a hard sell all for the ego of a man like Putin.
tldr; Putin isn't g
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The trouble with the argument that Putin is backed into a corner is that, if you take it literally and ask, "what corner"? the answer is the corners of Ukraine. All of those corners are only corners because they back against the Russian border. All the areas that Russia holds in Ukraine only border Russia. Putin can always just back into that area. They can always claim anything they want to save face. They can just say that they accomplished what they came to do and now they're leaving. They've changed the
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Every offramp he has already been offered was declined, and in fact he just pushed the accelerator harder. Why do you think anything is different now?
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> Actually they do. Several hundred years track record of stopping wars, especially nuclear ones.
Yes, because appeasing Nazi Germany was oh so successful in stopping the only war in history where nukes were ever seriously on the table and then subsequently used.
Nuclear weapons did not even exist, and were not even a possibility in the imagination of the leaders, during the times you seem to be are referring to (e.h. Neville Chamberlain).
Appeasement was certainly a mistake, but it had nothing to do with nuclear weapons, which were not "on the table" as you suggest.
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Appeasement was certainly a mistake, but it had nothing to do with nuclear weapons, which were not "on the table" as you suggest.
I will note, as an aside, that didn't stop a losing Hitler from constantly threatening/promising to destroy his enemies with a vague German "superweapon" that never materialized. I can't help drawing some parallels to Putin's nuclear threats.
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Don't pay the Danegeld, or you'll never get rid of the Dane.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
The people in the area Russia "holds" are Russian and want to be a part of Russia.
What's your basis for this claim? The recent referenda in which people voted at gunpoint and blank ballots were counted?
There are some people in those areas that want to be part of Russia, but having seen the consequences of being controlled by Russia, I suspect that it is a lot fewer than in January of this year.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am a little concerned that, over the outrage of sham referenda held at gunpoint, people are only focusing on the gunpoint situation, the badly run, non-anonymous ballot with no control systems against cheating, and the fact that such a referendum called by a foreign nation inside another nation's territory during a war is illegitimate. They're not actually focusing on the real issue, which is that you can't selectively depopulate an area and then hold a "democratic" initiative in the depopulated area. That's like saying you can achieve a majority vote in congress by murdering half the congress people beforehand.
That's exactly what Musk is suggesting. He's suggesting that the people in these regions, especially Crimea, have another vote, but this one internationally monitored, to decide whether to join Russia. So he thinks that it's ok to force out a huge number of people who live in a region, replace them with people from your own region, then have those people vote on whether to become part of Russia. Where exactly does he think all those Russians who moved into Crimea are living? A lot of them are living in houses stolen from the former residents. Under Ukrainian law, they're in the country illegally (actual invaders). Under what right exactly does Musk think they should get a vote?
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm over that now. When Putin got Crimea and Donetsk and Luhansk and still decided to come back for the whole rest of the nation, I realized this is really just a case of somebody who will keep taking until he is stopped. And reverting not only this failed annexation but the previous couple annexations is the best way to deter Putin and other would-be czars.
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The dude believes Ukraine is still a Russian fiefdom, and he's clearly stated as much.
Fucker needs to be taken out.
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As mentioned previously, there's no doubt the Russians completely made up their plebiscite results- but also, polling from Kyiv showing that the plebiscite would fail is made up as well.
The inconvenient fact of the matter is, the people in Crimea got really pissed off when
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Pre-referendum [wikipedia.org] polling for you.
Pre-2014 invasion polls were all over the place. There was some support but the last was: A poll by the International Republican Institute in May 2013 found that 53% wanted "Autonomy in Ukraine (as today)", 12% were for "Crimean Tatar autonomy within Ukraine", 2% for "Common oblast of Ukraine" and 23% voted for "Crimea should be separated and given to Russia".
Once Russia invaded the polls are kinda useless. Not only was the population literally at gunpoint but wartime emotions are extreme and the mostly blo
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Do they teach any history in schools any more besides "Germany, 1941-1945"?
Lol, we learn history by watching Burgerland blockbuster only. Personally I have no idea what nationality people in Crimea or Donbass want and now there is no way to know.
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The people in the area Russia "holds" are Russian and want to be a part of Russia.
The people in the area Russia invaded voted for Ukrainian independence.
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Secondly, Putin's absolute and total hypocrisy towards Ukraine is on record - oh Russia recognizes Ukraine's borders / yeah those were Crimea self defence forces, nothing to do with us / psych of course they were our soldiers / I promise we don't have further ambitions beyond Crimea / I've launched a "special operation" on Ukraine / Of course Russians won't be conscripted / LOL you're all going to the front [to die] etc. etc.
Appeasement does not work
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There is a third option, in that Musk's lawyers did not realize the agreements they signed forced them into the situation where the deal was going to be binding and that they would
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Today, Twitter's share price was:
$42.91 @ 12:05pm -- around where it's been for a *while*
$49.62 @ 12:12pm
$47.93 @ 12:14pm -- +12.67%
Re: Wait, what? (Score:5, Informative)
It is strange how people will watch Musk completely and obviously cave (pay well over the market peak for a company during a down market), and then retcon a 5 dimensional chess game that he won.
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Musk is a narcissist, and is terrified of the likely humiliation he'd get if the trial goes forward.
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Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Informative)
He was unable to show that the "bot problem" was anywhere near the level he claimed it was - his own people's investigation found numbers higher than Twitter's 5% claim, but much closer to that than to Musk's "at least 20% and probably much more". That, combined with the fact that he'd waived due diligence, pretty much sunk his chance to get out of it.
Although honestly I'm surprised he's not just going with backing out and paying the 1 billion penalty.
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So for just 300% more, he can run the company as he pleases into the ground.
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Although honestly I'm surprised he's not just going with backing out and paying the 1 billion penalty.
The $1 billion escape clause only applies if:
a) Circumstances outside of Musk or Twitter's control block the deal (3rd party financing issues, regulatory action, etc)
b) There's substantial fraud that impacts the financials
Option b is why he tried the fake account excuse. But a) Twitter was always open about how they came up with their numbers and the limitations of them b) Musk's 20% counter is obviously way more wrong than Twitter's numbers
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Although honestly I'm surprised he's not just going with backing out and paying the 1 billion penalty.
He always wanted it. He just thought he could get it cheaper. It's worth the price to him. In order to be a proper modern supervillain you have to own a media outlet so that you can alter public opinion.
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So that hissy fit was all for nothing?
From the linked article " ... alleging that Twitter had misled him about the size of its user base and the prevalence of automated accounts known as bots." - either the issues have been resolved (i.e. Twitter showed that actually they didn't misled with regard to their comodity database size) or he was forced due to lack a legal precedence - there was lot's of activity behind the closed doors about it.
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Re: Wait, what? (Score:2)
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Just yesterday Musk came out as a Republican [twitter.com] on Twitter, and pretty much the whole world told him to go fuck himself. He probably just wants to delete all the replies to his tweet.
More like a naive dunce, but I see where you are going ;-)
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Maybe he'll supply Twitter with better bots and use them to pump the share price.
Wow (Score:3)
Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)
Musk has always had a bullshit excuse disconnected from reality in his complaint.
Twitter "Of our billions of registered users we are pretty sure 200 million or so are real people. Give or take 5%"
Musk "It seems like way more than half of the users are bots!!"
Twitter "That's entirely possible, we only are saying >95% of the people we think are real are real."
Musk "It's like most of the tweets are from bots!"
Twitter "That's entirely possible."
Musk "You're totally lying about the bot counts! I just found another bot."
Twitter *sigh* "Again, we aren't making statements about percentage of tweets, or even percentage of total users, just the percentage of the subset of users we claim are human."
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I'd guess it means Musk had been told by his attorneys that he was almost bound to lose, so preferred to try to make it look like this was his choice rather than just being a loser coerced by the court.
It's interesting that he's not even attempting to offer any less than the original price he was on the hook for - maybe an indication of how strong Twitter's case was. The language is interesting though - "proposes to buy" vs "agreed to buy". Has anything changed in this new "proposal" ?
Got to wonder if the l
Haha (Score:2)
Cue up Dave Chappelle - When keeping it real goes wrong.
My take (Score:2)
And/or he finally realized Twitter has power as an influencer platform that's worth the price.
I wonder how much he saved? (Score:5, Interesting)
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What with the drop in TWTR's share price due to the uncertainty, and the additional drop due to the market downturn, I wonder how many more shares of TWTR he and/or his partners bought up at a discount vs. the offer price? It was under $40 less than a month ago.
I actually doubt this would be the case.
Any "partner" of his is going to be a very rich individual, meaning they'd need to buy a lot of stock to make it worthwhile.
And anyone close to Musk who bought a lot of Twitter stock while Musk was supposedly trying to exit the deal would be a massive red flag for regulators and the start of an investigation for insider trading (which does send people to jail).
Well that sucks (Score:2, Informative)
If you don't like riots in your cities this is bad news for you. When he inevitably loses the next election because 50% of voters literally want him put in prison making him unelectable you can expect widespread violence. Hopefully nobody sets fire to your car
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You do.
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I'm sure glad I don't live in your universe.
I wish you didn't.
NOT Confirmed (Score:2)
Doubt he has the money now (Score:2)
Insist on a cashier's check not drawn on a Russian or Saudi or Indian bank.
With conditions (Score:2)
NOW I GET IT! (Score:2)
Finally, a stunningly intelligent and clever move that makes me realize that Elon Musk truly IS a genius, and not just an idiot gasbag full of hot air!
How did he manage to navigate himself back to the original offer price? His fancy footwork and 4D chess skills are truly astounding here, I can't even figure out which parts of this deal are genius and which parts are disguised as being utterly moronic.
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It's not exactly 4DC stuff here but assuming he doesn't get in some kind of trouble for all his shenanigans it's a bunch of free advertising. He always wanted Twitter, he wanted to see if he could get it cheaper.
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It's not free advertising, he's paying a law firm a lot of money for this case.
And he was never getting twitter for less money, that wasn't possible in this deal.
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His fancy footwork and 4D chess skills are truly astounding here, I can't even figure out which parts of this deal are genius and which parts are disguised as being utterly moronic.
He has made himself into the tech equivalent of Rupert Murdoch, which isn't entirely stupid. He probably overpaid, and as far as I'm concerned Twitter is cancer, but it is influential. The mainstream media will probably talk about tweets less than they used to given Musk's now openly declared political leanings but they're still going to quote Tweets a helluva lot more often than they quote Truth Social. After all, AOC uses the platform.
Kinda dumb at that price sure. Utterly moronic? No.
Rich People and Their Toys (Score:2)
He's probably realized he can't get out of it and having his own massive private platform to run how he wants is probably interesting enough for him to just stop futzing around.
Shareholders are probably a bigger drag on Twitter than public sentiment.
Truth Social is imploding making it clear you can't just build a platform from scratch no matter how rabid your fans are and there are no serious alternatives for conversation that doesn't just invite degenerate racists and bigots.
Most likely (Score:2)
his investigation into the Bot accounts discovered maybe more than the 5% that Twitter was claiming but less than the 20% that he thought. Couple that with potential fines and dragging it through the courts and he probably came to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it to prolong it.
He's going to clean house at the executive ranks and probably do the standard 10% staff layoffs. Maybe he has come up with an idea on how to reduce the Bot accounts.
Short term he is overpaying but if he is able to execute a turn
Re:Most likely (Score:4, Insightful)
his investigation into the Bot accounts discovered maybe more than the 5% that Twitter was claiming but less than the 20% that he thought.
He was never even talking about the same number as Twitter. Twitter was reporting percentage of monetizable daily active users, and Musk was talking about total active users but pretending it was the same thing.
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Considering the SEC only has civil jurisdiction and not criminal (i.e. they can't lock anyone up) I take it you have no idea what you're talking about.
LOL. So who put Martha Stuart in prison? Oh wait...
https://www.sec.gov/news/press... [sec.gov]
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The DOJ, according to your link.
The SEC only pursues civil enforcement:
The Commission seeks, among other relief, an order requiring Stewart and Bacanovic to disgorge the losses Stewart avoided through her unlawful trades, plus civil monetary penalties. The Commission also seeks an order barring Stewart from acting as a director of, and limiting her activities as an officer of, any public company.
Whereas the DOJ pursues the criminal. They are separate, though evidence from the former may be used by the latter.
In a separate action, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York has obtained an indictment charging Stewart and Bacanovic criminally for their false statements concerning Stewart's ImClone trades.
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Pssst, read your link again.
"The SEC has extremely broad investigative and enforcement powers. While it cannot file itself file criminal charges, it works directly with the Department of Justice and the United States Attorney's Office to bring those charges."
Nothing about my original comment is in conflict with this statement, right from the SEC's mouth. Sounds more like you're one of those know it all types who actually knows very little more than insults.
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The SEC doesn't "lock people up" at all. It doesn't even bring criminal charges. That's the DoJ's job. It does refer information on criminal activity to the DoJ.
The DoJ doesn't lock people up directly either, though some of its subordinate agencies [wikipedia.org] do.
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However, they are the primary investigators for criminal finance violations. They just hand the case over to the FBI for cleanup.
Think of it like the CIA finding a mole in their ranks, domestically. They have no enforcement powers, and so they hand the case to the FBI for cleanup.
Not every agency can be actual police, but many do law enforcement investigatory work.
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Russia has somebody in biz with him in some way; explains his pro Russia position lately.
Also his lawyers may advise him that this is the best legal move to make now.
Given the reports about bots inflating twitter one would expect him to offer LESS because it's not as valuable; not that it was before... but in terms of power of influence it's almost priceless.