The board of directors of the social network Twitter announced this Friday a plan to prevent business tycoon Elon Musk from taking control of the company, after this Thursday he made a public offer for US $ 43,000 million to acquire all of the shares listed on the market.
“The Rights Plan will reduce the likelihood that any entity, person or group will gain control of Twitter through open market accumulation without paying all shareholders an adequate control premium or giving sufficient time to the board of directors. to make informed decisions,” the company said in a statement.
That clause, also known as “poison pill” in financial jargon, it will be activated if a shareholder exceeds 15% of the company’s shares without the authorization of the board of directors.
Then, if Musk were to buy enough shares to exceed 15%, all the remaining holders of the platform’s shares could buy more shares at a discount, which would greatly increase the price that the businessman would have to pay to take full control of the social network.AFP reported.
Twitter’s announcement shows that the San Francisco, US-based platform plans to defend itself against a hostile proposal from the world’s richest man to buy it and make it a closely held company.
Elon Musk, the South African tycoon who owns the electric car company Tesla and aerospace SpaceXcurrently has a little over 9% of Twitter’s share capital, which makes it the largest shareholder of the social network, ahead of the Vanguard group (8.79%) or Morgan Stanley (8.76%).
This Thursday He made public that he has “sufficient funds” to buy 100% of the company and assured that he had a plan B if the Twitter board rejected the offer..
He also highlighted that did not seek to “make money” with the acquisitionduring a live interview at the Ted2022 conference.
“Twitter has become a kind of de facto public squareso it’s really important that people have the reality and perception that they are able to speak freely within the limits of the law”, he said, adding that he wanted to make an algorithm open source, so that users can know why the platform shows them certain content and make contributions to modify it.
Musk’s proposal faces questions on several fronts, including a possible rejection and the challenge of raising the money offered, but it could have wide repercussions on the social network if it is consummated.
