There will be no security check on deals from Tesla CEO, White House says.
(Photo: dpa)
san francisco South Korean investor Mirae Asset has pledged around $208 million (300 billion Korean won) to Elon Musk for the takeover of Twitter, according to insiders. Mirae’s financing is expected to be completed before the October 28 deadline for the Twitter acquisition, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Monday.
Mirae also invested in Musk’s rocket and satellite company SpaceX earlier this year. The financial group and Musk’s lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.
The newspaper “Korea Economic Daily” had previously reported on the Twitter investment plans of the South Koreans. Analysts believe Musk will need to bring more investors on board to finance the $44 billion purchase of the social media giant and avoid further sales of his shares in electric carmaker Tesla.
White House: No security check for Musk deals
Just last week, according to a media report, there was another fuss about the takeover. Financial service Bloomberg had reported that the White House was considering a national security review for deals by tech billionaire Elon Musk. Citing its sources, Bloomberg had written that Musk’s takeover of Twitter could also be affected. The White House has now rejected this. “The reports are not correct,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said on Monday. “The thing about screening related to national security, that’s not true.”
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Such scrutiny allows US authorities to ban transactions if they determine they harm the country’s national security. Mostly it is about the takeover of US companies by foreign companies. That would not be the case if Musk bought Twitter. However, the tech billionaire recently caused a stir with two foreign policy advances that brought him criticism.
He proposed making Taiwan a “special administrative region” under Chinese rule. The government in Taipei rejected this as “unacceptable”. Musk also called for Ukraine to give up Russia’s illegally annexed Crimea and agree to a UN-supervised referendum in its Russian-held territories.
Musk is the boss of the electric car manufacturer Tesla and the value of his shares in the company currently makes him the richest person in the world. Since Tesla has a large plant in Shanghai, which is very important for the company, there have been public concerns that Musk could, for example, restrict freedom of expression around China on Twitter in order to get on well with the leadership in Beijing .
The tech billionaire negotiated a deal to buy Twitter in the spring, then tried to get out of the takeover – and finally gave in again. The purchase could be completed in the coming days. Musk announced, among other things, that he would bring ex-President Donald Trump, who was banned from Twitter, back to the platform. Trump was fired from Twitter after he posted a video that spoke positively of his supporters storming the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021.
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