Twitter has agreed to be acquired by Elon Musk in a deal that values the company at $ 44 billion, the board announced Monday afternoon.
“The proposed transaction will generate a substantial cash premium and we believe it is the best way forward for Twitter shareholders,” Bret Taylor, chairman of the company’s independent board of directors, said in a statement.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, reiterated his plans to revive Twitter as a forum dedicated to promoting free speech.
“Freedom of expression is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the city’s digital hub where vital issues for the future of humanity are debated,” it said in a statement.
Musk also said he plans to “make open source algorithms to increase trust, defeat spam bots and authenticate all humans” on the platform.
It is the largest deal to privatize a company in at least two decades, the New York Times reported.
The board voted unanimously in favor of the acquisition. The deal is expected to close this year, subject to approval from Twitter shareholders.
No white knight
The official acquisition culminates in a soap opera drama between the famous Mercurial Musk and one of the most prominent social networks in the world.
The billionaire revealed earlier this month that he had become Twitter’s largest shareholder and soon after proposed to buy the company directly and privately. The Twitter board initially resisted the offer, adopting one anti-opa measure known as the poison pill.
But the board decided to negotiate after Musk updated his proposal to show that funding had been secured and after no other suitors came forward, according to media reports.
“It all boiled down to the appearance of no other white bidder or knight in the merger and acquisition process,” Daniel Ives, a Wedbush analyst who follows Twitter, said in a note. “The backs of board members were against the wall once Musk detailed his $ 46 billion in funding last week to put the pen on that deal,” Ives said.
Changes are approaching on Twitter
Musk, a prolific Twitter user with 83 million followers, describes himself as an “absolutist of free speech.” He previously described the changes he would like to see on the platform, such as ending content moderation, removing ads from the platform, cracking down on spam, and allowing users to edit tweets.
In a recent TED interview, Musk said he would like Twitter to err on the side of allowing speech instead of moderating it. He said he would be “very reluctant” to remove tweets and would generally be cautious with permanent bans. Musk said it was “quite dangerous” for “tweets to be mysteriously promoted and degraded” and to have a “black box algorithm.” He also acknowledged that Twitter should comply with national laws governing speech in markets around the world.
News of the takeover has polarized Twitter users. Republicans in Congress have pushed for Musk to reclaim the account of former President Donald Trump, the platform’s most famous tweeter before he left. permanently banned following the January 6 assault on the Capitol. But liberals and academics studying online speech warned that Musk’s influence could open the platform for abuse and mud.
“Delivering Musk’s reigns on Twitter will no doubt trigger conspiracy theories that the platform has tried to suppress, and any attempt to use the platform to share legitimate information will be overshadowed by a toxic pit of misinformation,” he said. the non-profit organization Media Matters for America. in a statement.
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