After several weeks of public back and forth negotiations, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has reached a deal with the board of Twitter to buy the social media giant for $54.20 per share in cash. The company released a statement outlining that “the purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter.” Immediately following the purchase, Musk said, “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.” He continued:
“I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
Elon Musk (Photo by Patrick Pleul/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Musk’s buyout of Twitter has captivated the world as the self-described “free speech absolutist” sought to take control of what is arguably the most significant public square on the planet. On April 4, Musk acquired a 9.2% stake in the company and was offered a seat on the board of directors in what is primarily seen as an effort to prevent him from gaining greater ownership. The seat came with a proviso that he would not seek to purchase more than 14.9% of the company.
After Musk rejected the offered seat, he then set the wheels in motion to attempt to purchase the entire company, offering $54.20 per share in a deal that would cost more than $40 billion. Now that a deal has been reached, traders are closely watching the ticker price, which jumped 5% since reports emerged earlier that Twitter might accept the bid.
