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Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

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Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#461

ITT: - Elon is stupid, haha he will lose money. - Elon is evil, he's trying to pull a fast one on this corporation! - Elon waived his rights, he shouldn't have agreed to their fake numbers! - Twitter is allowed to claim whatever % of spam bots they want for the deal. - Twitter's censorship is actually a good thing, here's why...

ITT - Elon is a genius, he doesn't make mistakes - Elon's Twitter purchase offer isn't an ego trip or a distraction, he actually has a plan to make Twitter earn its keep - People keep saying that spending money on an overvalued asset that has zero fit with his engineering experience and ambitions will make Musk poorer, not richer, but none of those people are as smart as Elon Musk - Elon's decision to waive due dilig…

I don't think we are reading the same thread or even the same site.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#462
post #155

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

If someone's stock is as incredibly overinflated as Tesla has been for so long, choosing the most effective way to liquidate stock without triggering a run becomes a social engineering problem with the incentive of a multi-billion dollar payoff. Honestly I think other people trying to read this situation in some way that ignores a multi billion dollar incentive just sitting there is utterly naive.

I wondered this early on. More so when I thought he would actually buy twitter as Twitter had had some serious share price decline at that point for over 6 months, so it's a way to shift money from an inflated area to a more moderately priced one. Plus he obviously likes the platform in general.

If true, I don't think it's the case he did it intending to pull out. Seems unlikely he would have signed the billion dollar exit clause when he could have easily dragged the initial talks on a bit longer for largely the same result before 'changing his mind'.

My best guess is the offer was genuine (thought impulsive) but as he's seen the price drop further, now his offer seems too much. Why pay $44bn for a sub $30bn company. Kinda simple but seem most likely than all these more complex theories.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#464

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…

"Twitter has tremendous potential"

He may have been honest and correct about that, but later realized that he simply does not have the time to be CEO of yet another large company.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#465

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

Sure but then why skip diligence? That would be the ideal time to sell lots of Tesla stock and eventually say “You know what? Nah” without any sticky legal issues.

Most people do not liquidate billions of assets while waiting for due diligence to go through. They wait for diligence, then liquidate the assets.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#466

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

> a ruse to liquidate Tesla stock en masse without Tesla hodlers getting suspicious and tanking the inflated stock price. Couldn't he just have said "SpaceX needs more cash" or something like that?

That would be implying that a Musk company was in trouble. They constantly are in trouble, but he can never say it or else it breaks the fiction that Musk companies are predestined to be amazingly successful.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#467

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…

Actually, these sorts of things are expected in merger agreements, baked into almost all of them. It isn't unusual, when the seller doesn't provide the required data for the purchaser's due diligence that the agreement will terminate.

Who in their right mind would spend billions of dollars without being allowed to "look at the books" regarding the spam account ratio?

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#470

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…

My guess is he's hit that obscene level of wealth and realizes he is now beyond the controls of the system, and can therefore game it to his advantage. When you can afford the best legal team money can buy and payoff the rest of the gatekeepers, then the game is simply to transfer wealth into your own pocket in bigger chunks.

He's overleveraged and most of his companies are on the brink of falling below the point where he gets margin called. The poor sap wanted to rescue a few billions of dollars that could actually survive a recession, but he picked the wrong way to do it.
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