SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF/AP) — The Twitter board Monday voted to accept a takeover offer from Tesla CEO Elon Musk in a deal at $44 billion.
Musk took to the social media platform, tweeting out “I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”
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The deal took the San Francisco-based company private, purchasing shares at about $54.20 a share.
In a news release, Musk said his goal in acquiring Twitter was to make it better.
“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,” Musk said. “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.”
Before the opening bell Monday, shares of Twitter Inc. rose 5% with trading halted at the time of the announcement.
Twitter had enacted an anti-takeover measure known as a poison pill that could make a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive. But the board decided to negotiate after Musk updated his proposal to show he had secured financing, according to The Wall Street Journal, which was first to report the negotiations were underway.
“The Twitter Board conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s proposal with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing,” Twitter’s independent Board Chair Bret Taylor said in a statement.
“The proposed transaction will deliver a substantial cash premium, and we believe it is the best path forward for Twitter’s stockholders,” Taylor said.
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Some people are concerned about the purchase.
“We should be worried about any powerful central actor, whether it’s a government or any wealthy individual — even if it’s an ACLU member — having so much control over the boundaries of our political speech online,” wrote the American Civil Liberties Union on Twitter Monday after the deal was announced.
The ACLU noted in another tweet, “In today’s world, a small handful of private tech companies — including Twitter — play a profound and unique role in enabling our right to express ourselves online.”
On April 14, Musk announced an offer to buy the social media platform for $54.20 per share, or about $43 billion, but did not say at the time how he would finance the acquisition.
Last week, he said in documents filed with U.S. securities regulators that the money would come from Morgan Stanley and other banks, some of it secured by his huge stake in the electric car maker.
Musk has said he wants to buy Twitter because he doesn’t feel it’s living up to its potential as a platform for free speech.
In recent weeks, he has voiced a number of proposed changes for the company, from relaxing its content restrictions — such as the rules that suspended former President Donald Trump’s account — to ridding the platform of its problems with fake and automated accounts.
Trump has reportedly said he has no interest in rejoining Twitter even if his account was reactivated, having recently launched his own platform, Truth Social. That social media company has been mired in problems since the troubled February launch of the Truth Social app that left users struggling with glitches and access problems.
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Musk is the world’s wealthiest person, according to Forbes, with a nearly $279 billion fortune. But much of his money is tied up in Tesla stock — he owns about 17% of the company, according to FactSet, which is valued at more than $1 trillion — and SpaceX, his privately held space company. It’s unclear how much cash Musk has.
Source: sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com.