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

Elon’s Out

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 767 posts

Re: Elon’s Out

#381

Post by throwaway09223 »

kortilla wrote: post #316
throwaway09223 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oh give me a break. Property of a privately owned company can be directly seized.

I have not done an analysis on exactly which of Musk's private companies are jointly owned, and how the ownership is structured. It's a comment on hn for crying out loud.

Re: Elon’s Out

#382

Post by codesections »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #140
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…

> What if the court orders Musk to close the deal and he says no? I can't believe people are taking this very silly statement seriously. This is utter nonsense. There are remedies for people who disobey court orders. Having assets makes you more vulnerable to a court's authority because you have something to lose. If a court orders specific performance and he doesn't do it then he's liable and the court will take his…

> This is such an absurd thing [for Matt Levine, a former 3rd Circuit clerk, Yale Law grad, and Wachtell M&A attorney] to say it's hard to find a way to charitably respond.

If your interpretation of the post suggests that a highly qualified attorney is getting the basics of US law absurdly incorrect, you might want to reconsider whether you're understanding the intended meaning.

(Here, Levine is making a specific claim about the remedies that the Delaware chancellory court typically employs, not about the authority of US courts)

Re: Elon’s Out

#383

Post by maxbond »

ta8645 wrote: post #285
sroussey wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon is the force against himself. No conspiracy required.

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.

Who are these enemies, and why do they oppose him?

I frankly don't see any "enemies." Are the SEC his "enemies?" I don't think so, he goes out of his way to bend securities law. If you go poking a bear and it takes a swipe at you - you're simply a fool, and the bear is not your enemy.

Re: Elon’s Out

#384

Post by majormajor »

082349872349872 wrote: post #252
throwaway09223 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if the court orders Musk to close the deal and he says no? I can't believe people are taking this very silly statement seriously. This is utter nonsense. There are remedies for people who disobey court orders. Having assets makes you more vulnerable to a court's authority because you have something to lose. If a court orders specific performance and he doesn't do it then he's liable and the court will take his…

Note that in TFA, the continuation of this very silly statement is footnoted [6], which literally starts with "I made this joke before...", so none of us ought to be taking it seriously.

The footnote only applies to the "Chancery jail" bit, not the suggestion that the court may not want to risk a public showdown: "A showdown between Musk and a judge might undermine Delaware corporate law more than letting him weasel out of the deal would." - this sentence is after that footnote.

Re: Elon’s Out

#385

Post by georgia_peach »

VerminOctopus1 wrote: post #304
georgia_peach wrote: post #160

This is politics masquerading as legal analysis. Twitter, by its own admission, lied about their user count for years. Elon will either go without penalty, or take a slap on the wrist. Levine spends a lot of time shilling on bots because he knows that's a weak spot for the Elon haterz club. https://nairametrics.com/2022/04/28/twitter-says-it-inflated... edit: Not an Elon fan BTW. Just don't appreciate this Levine's a…

You saying that Twitter’s SEC filings over the last several years included knowingly falsified information?

> The social media company, Twitter, has admitted to overstating the figure of the platform’s users by 1.9 million in the last three years. The company disclosed this in its Q1 2022 financial report released today. The revelation comes days after the board of the company accepted a $44 billion offer by Elon Musk to take over Twitter.

> Twitter says an “error” introduced in Q1 2019, resulted in the overstatement of its monetizable daily active usage or users (mDAU). According to the company, this went on undiscovered for three years.

Three years, and they figured this out mere days after being strong-armed into accepting the Musk offer they wanted to evade? I have a bridge to sell to anyone who believes Twitter didn't already know.

Re: Elon’s Out

#386

Post by pclmulqdq »

ethagknight wrote: post #276

I find it amazing that not one of the top comments gives Elon ANY consideration that maybe, just maybe, he has a legitimate case against Twitter. We don’t know what he’s found, what he was told, what he was promised, what changed on Twitter’s side. Some very top level people bailed or were fired shortly after Elon’s acquisition proposal was announced. It sure appears that Elons is just balking, but what is far more l…

If he had a case, he would have said that he had a case in this letter.

Everything I've seen about Musk suggests that he is not particularly smart, but he is audacious. The hyperloop, the claims about autonomous driving, the boring company nonsense, and all sorts of other Tesla-related claims have all come out to be massive disappointments.

If 64,000 people bet on a coin flipping heads 16 times in a row, one of them is going to make it. That one is Elon Musk.

Re: Elon’s Out

#387

Post by pseudoramble »

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 this makes a lot of sense. A question I have about it though - why not say it's for something else then? If the goal is to get value out of Tesla and put it elsewhere, it seems like cash for another company he's running seems reasonable enough? Perhaps that's illegal for some reason I'm naive about?

Re: Elon’s Out

#388

Post by bell-cot »

JaimeThompson wrote: post #78
edgyquant wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally there’s not even a hint that Musk is above the law yet you’re calling it a cyberpunk future

Smoking weed makes you lose your security clearance, Musk did it on camera and still has his because of "reasons". That is one example of the rules that apply to most others not applying to him.

It ain't just Elan. There's a lot of non-enforcement of federal law, rules, & reg's involving marijuana.

And doing it publicly...that pretty well nerfs the old "give us the secrets, or we'll reveal the fact that you smoked week" spy gambit.

Re: Elon’s Out

#389

Post by majormajor »

zackees wrote: post #380
throwaway09223 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What if the court orders Musk to close the deal and he says no? I can't believe people are taking this very silly statement seriously. This is utter nonsense. There are remedies for people who disobey court orders. Having assets makes you more vulnerable to a court's authority because you have something to lose. If a court orders specific performance and he doesn't do it then he's liable and the court will take his…

Why would the court force Elon to buy the company when the remedy in the contract is a one billion payout?

It appears that that's the remedy for failing to get funds, not for cold feet; there's a performance clause for the latter, so Levine suggests "Musk’s goal here is presumably to walk away from Twitter and pay only $1 billion in damages." - that Musk is negotiating by making a stink to even be able to pay instead of going through with the deal he signed.

Re: Elon’s Out

#390

Post by kibwen »

parineum wrote: post #176
typon wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's wild to me that people think that Elon might actually face legal consequences for this. The Delaware court isn't some magical place run by elves. It's a court in the US. You know what's a lot cheaper than $34 billion dollars, or heck even $1 billion dollars? $200k for 3-4 judges. The Supreme Court just changed the law of the land based on a right-wing political campaign. You think a billionare, let alone the ric…

> The Supreme Court just changed the law of the land based on a right-wing political campaign. You think a billionare, let alone the richest billionare is going to be subject to any serious consequences? It's absurd to even entertain this. You know who has the authority to overturn that decision? Our democratically elected legislature.

Are you referring to the legislature where one house is deliberately unrepresentative of the people, and where the other house has been gerrymandered into unrepresentative oblivion, and whose bills are signed by an executive position who has preposterously lost the popular vote in two out of the last six election cycles?
Post reply on HN