Elon Musk has offered to buy social media platform Twitter for a cool $43 billion, which he says is his “best and final offer.”
The Tesla chief executive and the world’s richest person says he’s ready to “unlock” Twitter’s potential.
The news emerged today just days after he purchased 9.2% shares in the online company but sensationally turned down an offer to sit on the board.
The 50-year-old billionaire has made a regulatory filing to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which detailed his offer of $54.20 for all the Twitter shares he currently doesn’t own. That adds up to a whopping $43 billion.
Musk has been unhappy with what he sees as Twitter’s attempts to censor its users and believes that the platform could do more to enhance freedom of speech. He’s cited this as his reason for wanting to take hold of the reins.
Elon Musk tweeted that he’d made an offer to Twitter
The free speech advocate used what he hopes will be his newest company to announce the news. In a tweet to his 80 million followers, he linked to the SEC filing and wrote, “I made an offer.” At the time of writing, the tweet had already racked up nearly half a million likes.
Within the SEC filing, Musk penned a short letter to the chairman of Twitter’s board, Bret Taylor, explaining his reasons for making the offer. He wrote: “I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.”
“However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
Elon Musk will give up Twitter shares if his offer is refused
Musk continued to lay out his terms for the hostile takeover: “As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.
Musk concluded by stating: “Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.”
According to CNN, Twitter has released a statement confirming it had received the offer. The statement claimed it would carefully review Musk’s offer before making a decision that “it believes is in the best interest of the company and all Twitter stockholders.”
If the Twitter board doesn’t accept the offer and Musk follows through with his threat to dump his shares, that could cause the share price to drop significantly, which is something the board will likely be keen to avoid.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has not yet commented publicly. Agrawal has not tweeted since Sunday when he announced that Musk had decided not to accept Twitter’s offer to join their board.
Controversy is never too far from the Tesla businessman, who recently challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a fight in the probably misguided hope of resolving the situation in Ukraine.