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Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

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Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#141
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely love that fact that this tweet happy individual might actually get slapped for just tossing out tweets. Not sure if $1B would make him squirm or not, but even for billionaires, $1B is an expensive twitter rant.

If he gets punished it won't be for "just tossing out tweets" it will be for negotiating and signing a legally binding contract and then breaking it. It would be possible to enter into a contract through tweets alone. That didn't remotely happen here, though.

But he only signed that agreement because his ego wouldn't let him back away from those tweets

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#142

I think he realises that it is worth a lot less than he offered, he will probably walk away from it and get sued. Any legal experts out there?

Look around in the thread. M&A experts have confirmed that Musk cannot walk away from the deal, even by paying the $1 billion, unless Twitter lets him.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#143
post #43

Twitter is going to be the downfall of Elon. I don’t understand is fascination with it. It’s a big distraction and he alienates a certain percentage of his customers for Tesla.

Elon is going to be the downfall of Elon.

Trying to buy Twitter is just a symptom.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#144

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

That’s immensely believable, I wonder how he got someone people onboard to be help him fund it though. It’s even more of a stretch but maybe the rest of them wanted more liquidity too?

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They’re saying they’re lying about the numbers. Which would be fraud. But they've been sending the SEC these same numbers calculated using the same methodology since 2013, right? If they were materially adverse circumstances, you'd imagine that someone would have caught this in the last 9 years...

Also, Musk routinely knowingly confuses DAUs and normal users. Twitter claims 5% of daily active users are bots, but Musk complains about how many of his followers are bots, when clearly many of those wouldn’t be DAUs. Twitter’s CEO has addressed this. Musk responded with a poop emoji: https://twitter.com/paraga/status/1526237578843672576?s=20&t...

Not only that, but monetizable DAUs, which is basically an advertising metric consisting primarily of folks whose only actions on a given day might just be "checking my feed, liking a couple posts", and from which fake users are likely already removed without there being a strong reason to shut down their accounts. Whatever ad impressions those users get don't get billed to advertisers, and there's no strong motive to shutting them down if they haven't published anything contravening Twitter's policies...

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#146

Elon waived his right to due diligence when he first made the offer to buy Twitter, so backing out of the deal by arguing a lack of due diligence is very funny.

Matt Levine has a take down of the supposed bot problem. Basically Elon not only waved due diligence, he signed a binding agreement to buy Twitter, and the bot talk is irrelevant. Even if there’s a problem, Musk should have addressed it before signing an agreement to buy the company. https://twitter.com/matt_levine/status/1545151445057536001?s...

The letter doesn't cite the bot problem directly, but instead Twitter allegedly failing to live up to it's obligation to give Musk info, which he wanted regarding the bot problem. (And a bunch of other alleged breaches.)

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#147

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

But Tesla stock did drop after the announcement of the deal. I think that is the real reasoning behind him quickly getting cold feet. He probably thought Twitter would be a fun side project, but the backlash from people in regards to Tesla, SpaceX, and just the general public meant it would be more costly both to his reputation and financially beyond just the sticker price. That took the fun out of it so he has been looking for ways to escape the deal ever since.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#148
post #53

This is good for Twitter, and good for the world. Musk's misguided approach to free speech, which says anything that is not explicitly illegal is allowed, would have made Twitter an open forum for spreading lies and hate. My guess is Musk never intended to buy Twitter. He needed an excuse for dumping billions of dollars' worth of TSLA at its peak (while at the same time faulting Bill Gates for shorting TSLA), and his…

> Musk's misguided approach to free speech, which says anything that is not explicitly illegal is allowed, would have made Twitter an open forum for spreading lies and hate.

Twitter is of course currently known as a source of Truth and Harmony.

"anything not illegal is allowed" sounds decent to me; if you want stuff illegal, make it illegal. If you want unwritten laws dreamt up by anonymous elites and enforced for random reason, go talk to Tipper Gore and the PMRC.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#149
post #39

This was obvious from the moment he brought up the fake accounts problem. The stock market (especially tech) tanked, other investors started having cold feet, and he realized his purchase was a mistake. It is bizarre though that Twitter leadership/board continued to engage with him on the matter – even handing him internal data to analyze – expecting a good faith resolution. Nothing Musk has done in the last few mont…

It’s because they want him to pay the agreed price. It is an extremely good deal for the shareholders now, so they are behaving perfectly rationally. And they can possibly force him to.

Yes but it was clear (to all outside observers, not the board apparently) that Musk never intended to pay the agreed price. He was just collecting enough material from them to justify his breach, and fake users was a smokescreen. Their response to any questions/statements about fake users should have been the equivalent of "you signed the agreement, now stick to it" not "let's work together and resolve your issues".

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#150
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But Tesla stock did drop after the announcement of the deal. I think that is the real reasoning behind him quickly getting cold feet. He probably thought Twitter would be a fun side project, but the backlash from people in regards to Tesla, SpaceX, and just the general public meant it would be more costly both to his reputation and financially beyond just the sticker price. That took the fun out of it so he has been…

The question isn't really whether it dropped or not but whether the perception was that it would have dropped more without that fig leaf.
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