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Elon’s Out

bloomberg.com

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Re: Elon’s Out

#311

Post by teleforce »

petilon wrote: post #71

This article says Musk agreed to buy Twitter mostly as a joke. I think there's a far better explanation. This wasn't a joke for Musk because after agreeing to buy Twitter he proceeded to sell billions of dollars' worth of TSLA stock, supposedly to finance the purchase. Even for the richest man in the world that's not a joke. I think a better explanation is that Musk offered to buy Twitter as a cover for selling billi…

Thank you for the explanations. How this is not one of the top comments is beyond me. This comment most logically explains all the drama started several months when Musk offered to buy Twitter. The stories generated several of the highest rated posts and several of the most commented posts at HN, just adding to the drama. Now it seems that it's quite a possibility that the Twitter drama is just a red herring for Musk to sell the much overpriced TSLA stocks.

Re: Elon’s Out

#312

Post by maxbond »

roca wrote: post #266
loceng wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Taking your version of events at face value: Musk hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on someone who merely criticized his rescue plan, received some lies from said investigator, and uncritically repeated them to his massive social media following, thus smearing the person concerned ... and this makes Musk a tireless advocate for the truth and social media sanity. Musk cultists are the worst. PS, if Musk can…

You would have had a really great comment if you hadn't signed off in a patronizing way. If you're trying to reach people, don't alienate them. If you just want to talk shit and don't want to reach people, please stop.

Re: Elon’s Out

#313

Post by svachalek »

henry_bone wrote: post #305
Pulcinella wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not how any of this works. E.g. the contract he signed already has the price he agreed to buy Twitter for.

Could it be (& I am asking) that he can invalidate the current contract on the grounds that daily active users aren't what twitter said. Then could they draft a new contract, complete with a new price and daily active users estimates? I don't know anything, so I'm asking. If someone out there is a M&A lawyer and can shed light, that would be great.

The first line is what he is trying to do right now. The answer seems to be "maybe", it's going to court because there's a chance that he can but Twitter also thinks there's a chance he cannot.

The second, maybe. I doubt that Twitter would be interested.

-- not an M&A lawyer

Re: Elon’s Out

#314

Post by ta8645 »

svachalek wrote: post #309
ta8645 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To pretend he doesn't have powerful enemies is just silly. It's not some kooky conspiracy theory. The only question is if you think his enemies are justified or not.

How did powerful enemies force him to make a public bid to buy Twitter, and then force him to back out of it? I'd like to hear the non kooky conspiracy explanation for that.

Who said anything about him being forced to do such a thing? People make bad decisions all the time, including Musk. But given human nature and frailty, people under a great deal of pressure and opposition like musk is, are likely to make worse decisions than they otherwise would.

Re: Elon’s Out

#315

Post by roca »

maxbond wrote: post #312
roca wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking your version of events at face value: Musk hired a private investigator to dig up dirt on someone who merely criticized his rescue plan, received some lies from said investigator, and uncritically repeated them to his massive social media following, thus smearing the person concerned ... and this makes Musk a tireless advocate for the truth and social media sanity. Musk cultists are the worst. PS, if Musk can…

You would have had a really great comment if you hadn't signed off in a patronizing way. If you're trying to reach people, don't alienate them. If you just want to talk shit and don't want to reach people, please stop.

You're right. My bad.

Re: Elon’s Out

#316

Post by kortilla »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #218
gpm wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They could seize and sell at auction the real property of any of his businesses. SpaceX rockets? Office chairs? Servers? Anything. They could not, because he does not own those businesses outright. Doing so would violate the other owners rights. They can seize his shares in SpaceX, but not SpaceX property.

Sure. The particular way the assets are seized depends on a number of different technical details. But the end result is always the same. You can either voluntarily liquidate and pay your judgements or you can have someone else do it for you.

I’m having it hard taking you seriously given you making such a basic mistake of thinking they could seize spacex property directly. What industry do you work in?

Re: Elon’s Out

#317

Post by akimball »

alphabetting wrote: post #4

I found this part most interesting. Public awareness of the Delaware Court of Chancery is about to skyrocket during this court battle. The fact that Musk is working in such bad faith here — that he seems so unconcerned with law and the contract he signed — cuts both ways. On the one hand, it will certainly annoy a Delaware chancellor; Delaware likes to think of itself as a stable place for corporate deals, with predi…

Amusingly, I first read that as "the Delaware Court of Chicanery".

Re: Elon’s Out

#318

Post by KKdU9EXbBhmLznR »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #127
theptip wrote: post #29

There's been a lot of speculating around here on exactly what it would take for Musk to get out of this deal; here's the TLDR of the analysis from Levine: > Musk cannot get out of the deal just because one of Twitter’s representations is false. He still has to close the deal unless the representation is false and it would have a “material adverse effect” on Twitter. This is a famously under-defined term but it genera…

> If the bots are 6% of mDAUs, whatever. It seems like the purchase price should be of the order of 6% less in that case. 6% of $44 billion is not a trivial amount of money.

Except that he knew that it was at least 5%. So you'd actually have to figure out how much the discount already included in the value is for that 5% (which is highly subjective, but the discount is almost certainly not also 5%), and then multiply it by six-fifths (maybe, because the discount is also almost certainly not linear).

Of course, this is all a moot point, because what an actual businessman (as opposed to a con artist) would do, if they were concerned the bot stats might be inaccurate, is make sure the agreement had specific terms in it as to what would happen if it was found to be inaccurate.

Re: Elon’s Out

#319

Post by Rapzid »

petilon wrote: post #71

This article says Musk agreed to buy Twitter mostly as a joke. I think there's a far better explanation. This wasn't a joke for Musk because after agreeing to buy Twitter he proceeded to sell billions of dollars' worth of TSLA stock, supposedly to finance the purchase. Even for the richest man in the world that's not a joke. I think a better explanation is that Musk offered to buy Twitter as a cover for selling billi…

I think the whole thing started as a lark because Twitter is personal to him and he knows better than everyone.

Maybe he sold more shares than he needed while he was at it; like you'd withdraw a bit more cash than you really need at the ATM.

Then the market down turn sobered him up.

Simple.

Re: Elon’s Out

#320

Post by maxbond »

roca wrote: post #315
maxbond wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would have had a really great comment if you hadn't signed off in a patronizing way. If you're trying to reach people, don't alienate them. If you just want to talk shit and don't want to reach people, please stop.

You're right. My bad.

Hey thanks for acknowledging. I struggle with this all the time and I don't always succeed either.
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