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Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

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Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#761
post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Twitter is supposedly not providing the data Didn't he get access to the firehose, which is, AFAIK, -ALL- the data? (not the 50GB he tweeted about but supposedly a 2TB/day stream?)

The firehose is all the posts . It's not all the views . And 'daily active users' are mainly viewing , not posting . Which makes me wonder why the argument about 'the firehose' and 'bots' matters.

Perhaps because it's not actually about the bots, it's about buyer's remorse and trying to get out of the transaction via some excuse.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#762
post #693

It’s been amusing to see the flip from people saying Musk can’t buy Twitter to Musk must buy Twitter. Buying Twitter the way Musk did right before the most telegraphed recession in modern history was colossal stupidity. I have no insight to Musks liquidity, but if Twitter is able to force him to complete the sale in the middle of a raging recession then how much of his empire would be diminished by forced liquidation…

Why would it cause job losses? Wouldn't others be able to hire due to the money transferring to them?

Trickle-down economics has consistently shown to be a failed hypothesis.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#763

Chancery courts will compel performance of this transaction absent a showing of an material adverse advent. Very, very high bar. The buyer is a highly sophisticated investor and the grounds that he is alleging form the basis of the breach of contract were and are public information that has not materially changed nor been alleged to have materially changed since the signing of the merger agreement. Moreover, and most…

A feature of modern finance is the blockbuster leveraged buyout signed right before the market crashes: RJR Nabisco in 1989, Hilton and Harrah's in 2006. Now Twitter, in 2022.

Porsche and VW in 2008 if memory serves well. Almost ruined Porsche. Or Schaeffler and Conti, which almost ruined Schaeffler, a private company at the time.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#764

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could they refuse after being compelled by a court ruling? Did they appeal / sue you back? Can't see how they could simply say... "no".

The judge ruled that the payment had to be made immediately; they could sue back, but they would have to pay first. In their words, it was a “BS ruling”, and they simply didn’t pay. I’ll tell you that I didn’t know you could just say “no”, but they did. My lawyers were at the point that they would send a (legally backed) letter to all their customers, that their payments should be redirected to some court. It would h…

I'm betting that for the money Musk is in for they will go with that option though, and considering all the side effects that would probably happen if Musk just said 'No' - he would have to be a level of stubborn that borders on mental instability.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#765
post #754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter even admitted to overcounting its users: https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/28/twitter-says-it-overcounte...

By 1%, and they corrected it?

This whole article and their filings avoid using percentages, specifically because it’s misleading at their size. Absolute numbers make more sense.

Regardless, “this is not the first time Twitter reported erroneous metrics around users” is the problem with them.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#766

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually have experience with this type of stuff, some business tried to acquire mine and kept postponing, and ended up with some excuse that there wasn’t enough technical design documentation, which would be a real-breaker. It wasn’t super big money, but also not small (high 6-figures). I ended up suing them, won on all counts, and the deal had to go through. Unfortunately, this company simply refused to do that e…

How could they refuse after being compelled by a court ruling? Did they appeal / sue you back? Can't see how they could simply say... "no".

When you have a judgement you can send it to collections, but often people just don't pay these things. It's really hard to collect for even small things like evictions.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#767

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difference being, Twitter has deep pockets and are highly motivated to see this through.

Not as deep as Elon Musk. When it comes to court battles, relative depth matters.

It really doesn't here IMO. They can both afford top-tier legal teams.

Delaware courts are known for dealing with these sorts of cases rapidly - there isn't likely to be any opportunity for dragging it out for years.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#768

> I have enormous respect for his engineering and business skills, he's accomplished some remarkable things. But he doesn't seem so great as a dealmaker. Perhaps he's badly advised, but hey, he chose his advisors. There’s no evidence that he’s a good engineer or a good businessman, save if committing fraud or stealing the accomplishments of others is in the list of things that qualifies one of either. It’s beyond tim…

[flagged]

Who was the original owner of the Tesla brand? Where did the idea for battery powered cars come from? How did Elon get listed as an owner of PayPal? How did the folks who worked at X.com feel about Elons leadership? What about after the PayPal acquisition? What was the primary method of profit generation for Tesla during the early days? How many years has FSD been floated for exactly?

If asking these questions and judging based on the answers to them is irrational, I’m happily irrational.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#769

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 agreement have a massive out; yes it doesn't matter what Elon thinks about the bots but if his financier think bots are an issue he gets an out since Twitter for some reason let a financing clause in.

Re: Notice of termination of Twitter merger agreement

#770

Chancery courts will compel performance of this transaction absent a showing of an material adverse advent. Very, very high bar. The buyer is a highly sophisticated investor and the grounds that he is alleging form the basis of the breach of contract were and are public information that has not materially changed nor been alleged to have materially changed since the signing of the merger agreement. Moreover, and most…

I don't think Elon is trying to get out of it, he's got 2 goals:

1. Buy more time until stock market (i.e. Tesla shares) recover 2. Renegotiate the price

Either one will probably mean he goes through with the deal. If he is under litigation for a year so be it, once the stock market recovers he's sacrificing a lot less of tesla to buy it.

It's a big IF though. If the US recession gets really bad and the Fed stops interest rate hikes, the market could recover very quickly. But equally if Powell wants to go the Volcker route, Elon is fucked probably, the market won't recover for years.

And in the meantime Elon's reputation I think is taking a massive hit. And I think a lot of his new political allies on the free speech side will be extremely disappointed. He might end up with no friends on either side.

So he is taking a big risk here.

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