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Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

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Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#111
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosh, I hope he was serious at the point he signed a contract with a $1B penalty, or else he’s the world’s worst businessman.

If you want to move $40B, this is just a two percent transaction fee to avoid losing $200B by spooking the public investors. That’s smart.

If that was his intent, it's fraud and has (in theory) criminal penalties.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#112
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gosh, I hope he was serious at the point he signed a contract with a $1B penalty, or else he’s the world’s worst businessman.

If you want to move $40B, this is just a two percent transaction fee to avoid losing $200B by spooking the public investors. That’s smart.

that's smaller than a Venmo transaction fee (3%)

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#113

I'm ready for the fireworks. Odds are he will be forced to go through with it, but he will negotiate a lower price. Edit: This is over the mDAU thing still? It's been explained to him very slowly that all the bots that post tweets all day are often not seeing ads, right? That the "monetizable" is a key part of that phrase?

If this goes to the courts then the only two options are he gets to back out entirely or he pays the originally agreed price. There's a chance of a settlement where Twitter agrees to sell for significantly less than that, but (1) there's zero incentive for them to do so and (2) they will definitely not get shareholder approval for that.

One thing for sure though is that a lot of lawyers are about to make a lot of money.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#114
What a ridiculous waste of time and energy for someone who should have better things to do. What part of his solar/EV/Mars vision was dependent on him owning Twitter? I hope he makes a swift and clean exit from this mess, but with enough bruises to teach him a lesson.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#115

It seems apparent to this observer that he developed cold feet pretty fast after an impetuous decision, and has been looking for any reason to back out of it since then. The spam accounts angle seems like a convenient scapegoat, rather than a real surprise to him. He's clearly eccentric in his approach to decision making: I don't think any Harvard Business School course will teach "the Musk Principles". But it's uncl…

There's another belief floated by Josh Wolfe (an investor with Lux Capital) who claimed it was a ruse to liquidate Tesla stock en masse without Tesla hodlers getting suspicious and tanking the inflated stock price. https://twitter.com/wolfejosh/status/1545387947578597376

Wolfe has being on anti Musk crusade for a long time.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#116
post #64
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the initial decision was something like "hey I could actually just buy Twitter, that would be funny". It's less clear to me why he almost immediately started trying to back out. It's probably a waste of a significant chunk of money, but is that all?

>> It's less clear to me why he almost immediately started trying to back out. That's what you do when you sober up and realize what a mess you've made.

Well, if the purpose of buying twitter was to improve the user experience of internet users and advance the doctrine of free speech, then why not just spend that same amount of money building your own twitter (mastodon instance or something) and use your publicity to attract users?

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but he will negotiate a lower price How? As best I understand things, he has zero wiggle room - he either buys Twitter for the agreed price or he stumps up the $1B termination fee. And if Twitter's board did go mad and decide to negotiate a lower price, their shareholders would almost certainly block it and/or sue the board, no?

A 1B termination fee is relatively small given that Twitter's market cap is down 10B since the beginning of April.

Which is why Twitter has the right to force execution, not just claim the break-up fee.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Musk made the offer 1. TSLA was trading at ~$1,000 share 2. He offered $54/share Now? 1. TSLA is trading at $750/share (so if Elon musk was 100% in TSLA, he lost 25% of his wealth). 2. Twitter's comprable, Facebook, fell roughly 33% on revised revenue projections and slowing growth. TWTR roughly tracks Facebook, except for last quarter where the stock hasn't moved due to Musk's offer. So Musk became poorer, and…

Do you really believe that the "if" in 1) is true? Really? Enough to make that comment?

It's true enough. He isn't 100% tesla, but the vast majority of his wealth is in tesla and spacex, and only one of those is actually redeemable in the short to medium term.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#120

It seems apparent to this observer that he developed cold feet pretty fast after an impetuous decision, and has been looking for any reason to back out of it since then. The spam accounts angle seems like a convenient scapegoat, rather than a real surprise to him. He's clearly eccentric in his approach to decision making: I don't think any Harvard Business School course will teach "the Musk Principles". But it's uncl…

He relies heavily on his average decision-making ability being way above average. By being this volatile he basically captures surprisingly many good risky decisions. At the same time he ends up with things like this.
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