Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

sec.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 1001 posts

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#501

Post by starkd »

timsneath wrote: post #17

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…

The twitter board has already announced it intends to litigate this. And they are not after just the $1B fee. That might be what Mr. Musk had in mind when he mentioned he was lawyering up in a few tweets awhile back. Even though he waved due diligence, that might not clear twitter from having lied about the bot problem. I suspect this is going into months of litigation. Perhaps Twitter will be willing to accept a lower price. It might be what Musk is angling for.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#502

Post by simonw »

cowtools wrote: post #116
988747 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> 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?

If spending a ton of money was a reliable way to build a new social network we would all be having this conversation on Google+.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#504

Post by starkd »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #462
pryce wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dolla…

No post body was provided.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#505

Post by 01100011 »

timsneath wrote: post #17

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…

Musk has always had problems(especially with telling the truth), but things seemed to really go downhill after he started doing drugs with Grimes.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#506

Post by dqpb »

madrox wrote: post #241

Everything about this deal strikes me as Elon trying to buy his way out of the fact he illegally acquired stock in a bid for a board seat. At the time, I'm sure he thought it was a clever way out of an immediate problem, and he certainly moved the conversation away from his stock buying shenanigans. I just don't know how he didn't see how the outcome would be...owning Twitter. So many people have gotten very close to…

> illegally acquired stock

Illegal how?

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#507

Post by 01100011 »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #60
timsneath wrote: post #17

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

Not just Elon but his brother as well.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#508

Post by hackernewds »

paxys wrote: 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…

The internal data grant could be so Elon has no defense when Twitter is ultimately gonna sue him next. It's coming

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#509

Post by manquer »

nemo44x wrote: post #398
manquer wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can’t accept anything like that , twitter board would get sued by their shareholders for any price renegotiation. Shareholders would sue them as most legal theory says twitter would win in court and enforce the deal, so there is no reason for the board to renegotiate instead of going to court, the board has fiduciary responsibilities.

Why not? Elon would be snarky to not buy and only lose $1B vs $10B. Clearly after investigation the company isn’t worth that and the public markets will vet forget. The stock likely tanks to They should be happy to get $35.

That model works when the parties in power own the business

The board does not own twitter, they only have fiduciary power to act on behalf the interest of shareholders. The merger agreement is strong and legal precedence in such cases has almost always been in favor of the seller , Twitter's probability of winning in court is therefore quite high and they can reasonably expect to force Musk to honor the agreement.

Given this scenario, there will be significant portion of shareholders ( likely the majority) who would want to take the legal route and try and maximize their value, even more so because now the stock is not going to reach same levels anytime soon.

If the board did not honor these expectations, those shareholders have good cause to sue and win an argument that board did not do their job[1] and have to compensate them for lost value in the sale. Loosing such a case(likely) will be catastrophic for the board members.

[1] This construct and limitations on the board is there for good reasons, otherwise a buyer would just bribe the board with far smaller amount than the value of company .

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#510

Post by hackernewds »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #85
paxys wrote: 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…

Bad faith has been Musk’s MO since the beginning. He even deliberately crashed Martin Eberhard’s roadster (allegedly, Tesla claims it was an accident.) https://jalopnik.com/tesla-co-founder-eberhard-sues-elon-mus...

Most forget that Elon did not found or invent Tesla
Post reply on HN