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Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

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Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#161

Post by hedora »

nickysielicki wrote: post #29

I don’t understand how any board can implement a “poison pill”, not just Twitter but Netflix and others, and not be found working against the interest of shareholders. Can anyone help me understand? You’re categorically changing the profile of the stock. This has a chilling effect on large investors, including but not limited just to Musk, right? Vanguard, for example, has just had its range of further investment lim…

Wait, if some ETF accidentally exceeds 15%, then what? First of all, that'll screw over a bunch of small investors, right?

Second, could Elon swoop in at that point?

Edit: Also, if Elon is reading this, I'll happily buy 14.9% of twitter, and vote as part of your block. Just pay me enough to cover the sale and taxes, plus 1%.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#162

Post by recuter »

Cookingboy wrote: post #148
recuter wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand how any board can implement a “poison pill”, not just Twitter but Netflix and others, and not be found working against the interest of shareholders. Can anyone help me understand? You’re categorically changing the profile of the stock. This has a chilling effect on large investors, including but not limited just to Musk, right? Correct. Hence the term poison pill. Now nobody else will be interested…

>Woke means broke I guess. That sentence alone means you weren't even discussing this in good faith. It's very well possible that the Twitter board believes that they can achieve higher value for the shareholders than what Elon offered. It's also very well possible that after talking to Elon through private conversations that you were not part of, they fundamentally disagree with his value and the direction he wants…

> That sentence alone means you weren't even discussing this in good faith.

Is that what good faith means now? Being religiously part of Camp A or B?

The balance sheet speaks for itself. Incidentally Parler or his potential Twitter clone will also end up a toxic internet community. Who cares? I personally wouldn't use either one.

Certainly with Twitter already doing a great job losing money and alienating most people (almost nobody actually tweets and usage is falling) an alternative would split the user base and accelerate their demise and the inane concept of web micro-forums being worth tens of billions of dollars. Companies will simply decide advertising on Parler/Twitter is not worth the hassle.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#163

Post by jacobolus »

NoOneNew wrote: post #11
jacobolus wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A web search indicates that “Bobby Axelrod” is a TV show character. What does “pulling a Bobby Axelrod” mean in this context?

His character, along with his foil Chuck Rodes, trick people into knee jerking traps. The more "public" of a trap, the better for them. A lot of wall street plays in the show are based on real world plays. This article read like it came out of an episode. Billions is a great show by the way.

Can you explain Musk’s trap and who is being trapped?

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#164

Post by hajile »

tsimionescu wrote: post #60
tuckerman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that the board's fiduciary means they must maximize profits at the expense of all else is a bit of a myth. Yes, they need to look out for their shareholders but they also need to do right by the company, and companies can be formed for any legal purpose and everyone (the company and the shareholders) values things differently. It's generally been upheld that the board has a lot of autonomy and, outside of gr…

> Yes, they need to look out for their shareholders but they also need to do right by the company, and companies can be formed for any legal purpose and everyone (the company and the shareholders) values things differently The board has a lot of leeway into how they achieve profit for the shareholders, but all decisions they make must be nominally in the interest of that goal (assuming we're discussing a for-profit c…

We are the largest perennially unprofitable company to ever exist. The richest guy in the world offered to invest a fifth of his net worth into the gamble of turning our company profitable while making our shareholders a massive profit.

Instead, we poisoned the system knowing that the stock is all but guaranteed to tank massively reducing our market cap and hurting our ability to take out still more loans to continue our unprofitable venture.

But we're holding true to our other nebulous values.

They'll have a very compelling argument.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#165

Post by zalebz »

14 wrote: post #64

Anyone care to speculate what his plan B would look like? Could he make a twitter clone/replacement then offer existing members $50 for their username and password plus x amount of engagement on his new site?

Backup 1: Make a huge show of dumping 9% of the company at the lowest possible share price (that does not trigger any SEC scrut6). Deride the current board as inept and having no vision for the future of the company. Watch the price plummet and acquire the injured version for less than his initial offer. Admittedly that doesn't work as well with a 1 year poison pill delay the board just triggered.

Backup 2: Continue making Twitter polls that potentially steer/force the current management's hand into the changes he wants to see implemented regardless.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#166

Post by ameister14 »

riccardomc wrote: post #121
RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It depends on what the interests of the shareholders actually is. Monetary only, or are there other considerations they care about? Is a board allowed to consider anything but?

Yes. The law doesn't bind directors to maximize shareholders value. https://www.reddit.com/r/law/comments/3pv8bh/comment/cw9t52d...

I could be wrong but I don't think Twitter is a B corp.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#167

Post by dundarious »

compsciphd wrote: post #104
LocalPCGuy wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a board is mandated to act in the best interests of the shareholders. That might be different than just maximizing the share price. They may believe this is a bad idea for the company as a whole, and that long term, it's objectively better for the company to not be owned by Musk.

isn't musks offer to buy out all the shareholders. i.e. lets take a crazy example. you have a company that is worth $1mil and we only imagine that it can be worth $100mil (based on the size of the market we are addressing). someone comes and offers $200mil but we know he will shut the company down (i.e. liquidate all its assets, or even simply the desire to destroy the company). While this might be sad for the compan…

Musk is trying to buy everyone out because he wants to influence the direction of Twitter. Why not ascribe a similar set of motivations to the other current shareholders? If that is a motivation for them, then shareholder profit is not the only relevant sense of shareholder value.

This isn't an argument for the poison pill clause, but is an answer to the following quoted question. It is funny to see this motivation of most existing shareholders ignored in order to bring into being analogous motivations of another. Especially when Musk's offer for Twitter has been in order to change it promote certain values, but conspicuously, better profits has not been one of those touted values.

> While this might be sad for the company, why is it not in the interests of the shareholders to take the offer?

I will sabotage my own argument somewhat though and say that I believe the economic motive dominates over time and is almost always (in macro and micro) the primary force.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#168

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #140
_3u10 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I made 10% getting in after the disclosure was made. I’d actually invest in a twitter owned by Elon and likely ditch all my other profiles too. A platform that makes money and has free speech would be wonderful. Maybe he can steal Rogan from Spotify too.

What value does a platform have when people are fed up with those who complain about "I want free speech" and leave for greener pastures? Just look at Facebook. It's widely seen as "boomer garbage" that's only used as a least-common-denominator resort for communication by the target group these days, and conspiracy crap groups and peddlers of propaganda are a huge part of the reason. Platforms and societies that fail…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#169

Post by politician »

tyre wrote: post #139
_3u10 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I made 10% getting in after the disclosure was made. I’d actually invest in a twitter owned by Elon and likely ditch all my other profiles too. A platform that makes money and has free speech would be wonderful. Maybe he can steal Rogan from Spotify too.

What’s a concrete example of speech that you’d make which is specifically banned on Twitter?

I’d make them publish their content moderation policies, and have all decisions documented and filtered through those public rules.

The speech is made in public and should be adjudicated in public. Today’s Twitter hides its moderation policies and decisions. Even though they are a private company (albeit publicly traded and the effective public square), this is wrong.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#170

Post by hajile »

axg11 wrote: post #129
UnpossibleJim wrote: post #105

So, I'm not very corporate savvy and this might be a very stupid question. Is there a NON-culture/political reason for all the push back against Musk buying Twitter? From the read, this just seem to be opening the door for someone else to try and take majority control and pining away for the days of Dorsey (which, if looked at objectively, weren't great... just filling an opportunity).

The pushback is simple: Twitter stock price was higher than Musk’s offer for most of 2021. We are in a downturn affecting the entire tech industry, and it’s likely that prices will return to previous levels at some point. Elon’s offer is a lowball and Twitter can bring more value to shareholders with or without Elon.

Their stock dropped along with Facebook and other media platforms the second Apple stopped them from tracking users everywhere. That's without mentioning the crazy overvalue problem such companies already have.
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