Another stunt from the most whimsical of bosses? Already at the head of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk proposed this Thursday to buy “100% of Twitter” and to take the company out of the stock market. The South African businessman, naturalized American, had seized more than 9% of the capital of the company at the beginning of April.
In a document sent Wednesday to the policeman of the American Stock Exchange, he proposes to buy each share at 54.20 dollars (against 45.85 dollars at the last close). Elon Musk specifies that it is “his best offer and his final offer” and threatens, in the event of refusal, to “re-examine his position as a shareholder” within the social network. The boss of Tesla had refused to join the board of directors of Twitter after taking a stake, which he would have forced him not to exceed 15% of the capital.
Elon Musk had bought back some 73.5 million shares of the California company, and it quickly became clear that this was not a passive investment. The richest man in the world multiplied provocations and polls last week on changes he is considering for Twitter. “Everyone seems to think Musk wants a bigger chunk of the company than the board would allow,” noted Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi.
Frying on the line
Several controversial tweets posted this weekend by Elon Musk have disappeared, including two polls: “Remove the w in twitter? (with, as a choice of answers, “yes” or “of course”) and “Convert the headquarters of Twitter in San Francisco into a shelter for the homeless since nobody goes there anyway”. His suggestions for changes to the paid subscription plan for the social network, Twitter Blue, have also been deleted from his profile.
At the time of the announcement of Elon Musk’s arrival on the board, Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal described him as “a passionate and intense critic of the network, which is exactly what we have need “. The entrepreneur has repeatedly criticized the platform about freedom of expression, believing that it went too far in moderating content. On Saturday, he wondered if the social network was “dying”, mentioning accounts that were very followed but not very active.
Last week, Elon Musk conducted a poll asking if users wanted an “edit” button to correct a tweet after posting. The overwhelming majority of the 4.4 million voters answered “yes”. The platform then announced that it was testing this feature, while specifying “not having had this idea thanks to a survey”.