Elon Musk purchases 9.2% of Twitter and becomes largest shareholder.
Elon Musk just taught the folks over at Twitter a very important lesson on life. If you are one of the most richest people in the world, you have the ability to just buy whatever you want. Now, in spite of their best efforts to silence him, Musk just purchased a 9.2% stake in Twitter.
“It was disclosed on Monday that the somewhat unpredictable Musk took a 9.2% stake in Twitter. The stake — valued at close to $3 billion as of Twitter’s closing price on Friday — is defined as a passive one.”
via Yahoo Finance
Even with the press release saying that Elon Musk is going to remain “passive” with the purchase, I doubt that actually happens, especially when you consider that he’s moving more aggressively to buy up stock in the company. After the announcement yesterday, Musk took to the platform that he now owns to tweet his opinions on Twitter’s freedom of speech standards.
Twitter has been a source of trouble for Musk. He has made numerous tweets that have sent regulators at the SEC into a frothing rage.
However to be fair, a big part of their job is to monitor and prevent market manipulation.
Announcing to your 80 million followers that you could take your public company private at $420 a share is the kind of thing that might lead to a bunch of people rushing to buy stock in your company if it is selling for less than that amount.
People might be led to believe that the stock is worth more than it is currently listed at and buy up a bunch of shares. Basically this would artificially increase its price if there’s no serious intention to take the company private.
I’m sure that people out there that hate Elon Musk are going to be up in arms about this. They’ll probably threaten to leave Twitter if he takes an active part in running it. As for the rest of us, maybe now we can get rid of all the bots claiming Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo are front-runners for the NBA MVP when clearly, the only answer is Joel Embiid.
What’s Elon Musk doing to soothe these people’s fears?
Wow. Less than one day on the job and he’s already doing a million times better than that Jack Dorsey guy ever did. Is there any question how he’s a billionaire? It’s clearly all skill. And also the mines his family owned in South Africa. But mainly skill.
Something tells me Twitter will be just fine. Especially when you consider that their stock price shot up by 20% when news of the purchase became public.
Here’s my prediction on what’s going to happen:
Elon Musk will make a handful of changes to the platform once he buys enough stock in the company. Then he’ll get bored and go back to trying to turn himself into a cyborg with Neuralink resume his quest to put humans on Mars with SpaceX.
First things first: Elon Musk is currently preparing to fight Vladimir Putin for the fate of Ukraine. From there he’s going to shake up Silicon Valley and social media.
Mandatory Credit: BRITTA PEDERSEN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
