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Elon Musk Puts $44 Billion Twitter Deal 'On Hold' [Updated]
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He's actually likely to piss off certain investors to the point they reject the current deal in-favor of demanding more money for the platform. I think I agree with others speculating that he never had genuine intent to make the acquisition. Sadly, this sort of thing is much more common in realestate transactions. He also puts himself in significant legal jeopardy as he has already voiced commitment to the acquisition publicly and to retract his offer without reasonable cause could result in any number of potential suits against him by Twitter and it's shareholders.
This honestly just wreaks of amateur hour and it just highlights how just because someone has a vision does not mean they are the best one's to implement or manage it.
By making an offer to acquire the company at a higher market price the intent would be to artificially drive up the stock price during the acquisition period and then unload any holdings he might have in Twitter to profit from the scheme. It's sadly common.
But he is a fool for doing something like this so publicly... if that was his intent all along. He should never have confirmed or denied any action or intent publicly.
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That’s a rather strong claim that we’re about to ‘hit a recession in a few weeks’? Why a few weeks? I understand the inflation/rising costs, but how did you derive that a recession is likely in a few weeks? I’m asking, because you subliminally just inserted that sentence in there without really stating why or what lead you to believe that.
People sometimes confuse ignorance or stupidity with evil. In the end it's all just fear. All people who succumb to fear will inevitably act in ways that are perceived negatively.If there's so many, please, do enlighten.
Let's hear how EV Tesla is worse than all other car manufacturers morally. I would be curious.
Let's hear how exploring space is a maniacal endeavor.
Let's hear how ostensibly opening up free speech instead of letting some anonymous partisan dweebs decide what can be read, said, and thought would be the downfall of the downtrodden West.
Here's the other rules, these are automatically exempt and disqualifying:
-copying and pasting URL's to rage filled clickbait articles, use your own words and thoughts if you can
-spicy tweets of no consequence
-projection/mind reading
-silly photos used a central argument, see below:
![5113.jpg]()
Just because the users and accounts themselves are not spam or bots does not mean that a large proportion of the posts on twitter are not spam or bots. A typical user can be identified as non bot, but how they post could rise to bot and spam. We deal with this nuance with advertising all the time. There are known bad IP addresses and then there is known automated traffic from infected computers that have both normal human and bot traffic that is atypical.
The guy is just a glorified marketer. No serious entrepreneur or corporate leader can possibly keep their eyes on as many balls as he has in the air with all the companies he's management affiliated with. If it was just Tesla... ok fine. But Tesla and SpaceX alone.... sorry way too much going on with both companies to even pretend to be effectively overseeing or managing those businesses. It's likely all delegated to another C-Level within each company and he just remains chief spokes person and marketer.
The problem arises when he talks and talks and puts his foot in his mouth or the mouths of those other C-Level execs. Granted I will concede I don't follow the happenings of this fellow much at all so I could be entirely off key here.
This is a VERY good point. The metric to evaluate value should be based on engagement not on user counts. It's likely that bot activity vastly outpaces human user behavior on the platform... so that 5% could be representative of 30% of total activity on the platform. One wouldn't know without evaluating behavior of accounts and so on.
You do realize that overstating the company's value (downplaying fake account numbers) is serious and something the buying party has to (or is that should?) take into account. Pausing to verify the numbers is no big thing.
Let's see what happens when the numbers are verified.
I can't condemn Musk completely. SpaceX is vital to the US, as it is the only ride we have to the ISS now. And other space ventures too, as NASA figures out it's heavy lift vehicle.
I still like the posts that appeared on celebrity accounts after the celebrities died.
I think the most famous one though was on Facebook and Instagram:
Joan Rivers posts from the grave: 'I've just bought an iPhone!'
iPhone 6...feet under? A scheduled sponsored ad on the late comedian’s Instagram account has boasted about her new Apple device. By Hannah Jane Parkinson
No, of course that is totally a valid reason. In such case Twitter would have misrepresented itself and thus made it impossible to effectively value the acquisition. That would be an instant deal killer. However, something tells me that they likely used the same language in reporting the metrics earlier as had been reported in the news post here. They take significant judgment but concede they cannot be 100% certain of the metrics... actually they state there could be "more" fake accounts. If that language was present during the initial discussion and since then Elon came out publicly to confirm an intent to acquire at a specific value.... then he can't use the user type variance whether in or against his favor to alter the parameters or back out of the deal without some serious potential cost to him.
Often times these sorts of deals have specific safeguards in place to protect each party. So there may be other superseding language in the contract(s). It's impossible to know without reading everything.
Either way, this could all have been handled privately or at least without another public announcement on his or Twitter's part. That is what makes this seem more like a performance than a genuine deal.
Even Steve Jobs was unable to effectively manage Pixar and one other company at a time. And all Pixar had to do was put out one animated movie every couple of years. I have dealt with CEOs that run multiple companies in the past and these companies are always in dire straights until they delegate some sort of independent management teams to run them. In my experience there is no personality trait that makes someone an effective multi-disciplined micromanager at any scale beyond a small business.
This does just reek of manipulation - trying to drive Twitter's buying price down.
Sorry just one more point I think is worth mentioning is that the value of the company cannot be overstated when publicly traded as Twitter is today. The value is inherent and apparent from all the SEC filings and current market values as recorded in the stock trade ledgers. This is intrinsic to the process and if there were something misrepresented in SEC filings by Twitter that caused its stock to be overvalued then they would be in massive trouble with the FTC and SEC.
However, if I am not mistaken, Elon made an offer about 10-15 dollars above market value for the acquisition. This is not as common as it might seem but it is a means to convince share holders to approve of the deal.
And that plan may be blowing up in his face. Musk is rich, but even he is not that rich to overpay like that.
100% agree. As both a younger corporate manager and eventually an entrepreneur myself I had to learn to delegate quickly or chaos would ensue. Usually when not in a management role I'd be brought in to remedy such situations in one or another corporate environment.
There just aren't enough hours in the day, nor energy to spare to truly manage so many entities. Even managing direct reports can be challenging regardless how few one may have.
The thing is, telling everyone he has doubts about the numbers certain wouldn't help him, and he hasn't dumped anything either. So I still don't understand how this would be a pump and dump.
If anything, it arguably could be the other way around.
Indeed and most of his wealth is tied up in his various investments (i.e. stocks and such from each company he might be titled to helm). It certainly makes the transaction much more challenging due to the volatility of those assets, so an above market offer might have been his only option.... but again the real question of WHY make such an acquisition in the first place has yet to be credibly answered. It just does not make sense to me for a number of reasons I won't get into.
Elon has been critical of the platform for some time. The acquisition was no labor of love that is for certain. However, if he were so passionate about effecting change in the platform through acquisition then he'd not disparage or disrupt the deal prior to completing the transaction. Reason being none of it plays in his favor, unless he never had genuine intent to acquire, in which case this is just par for the course.
In tandem he may have been considering dumping or shorting the stock in the process to both profit from the endeavor financially and getting is proverbial "rocks off" by damaging an entity he has little love for. Based on his public posts I would find such behavior credible and unsurprising.