The Tesla boss wants to take over Twitter.
(Photo: AP)
san francisco In the takeover battle for the short message service Twitter, a formal offer from Tesla boss Elon Musk to all shareholders is getting closer. This emerges from a message from Musk to the Securities and Exchange Commission SEC on Thursday.
The billionaire justifies this with the lack of an answer from the group’s management to his takeover bid. But he hasn’t made a decision yet.
In the same release, Musk also writes that he has secured a total of $46.5 billion in financing for the acquisition. 25.5 billion of these are loan commitments from a banking consortium led by Morgan Stanley. The Tesla boss, according to the business magazine “Forbes” the richest person in the world, wants to bring in the remaining 21 billion dollars through his own shares.
Even after the announcement of the financing commitments, investors doubt that Musk will reach his goal: Twitter shares were up 0.7 percent in early US trading at just around $47. Musk had in his non-binding offer $54.20 per share.
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The billionaire, who already owns around nine percent of the shares in the social network, recently announced that it wanted to take over the entire company for around $43 billion. He would then like to take Twitter off the stock exchange.
The supervisory board of the US group has launched a so-called “poison pill” to defend itself against the hostile takeover. The poison pill kicks in when an individual or group acquires at least 15 percent of Twitter’s outstanding common stock without board approval.
Then the other shareholders have the opportunity to purchase additional shares at a discount. That would make a takeover difficult. The rule should apply for one year.
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