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Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

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Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#501

Wow, my prediction is Musk will walk away, Twitter stock price will tank, and Twitter will be flooded with thousands of shareholder lawsuits (for breaching their fiduciary duty).

As is detailed by many smart people below, fiduciary duty lawsuits are difficult to win. They'd pretty much have to have board members emailing each other saying "This would be in the best interest of shareholders, but let's screw them over instead" This was an epic debacle. Musk invested 4 BILLION dollars in an asset of questionable value, because "free speech". If he times it right he could come out ahead financial…

from what i understand it's a matter of ideals combined with the technologist's desire to see the machines (all types, including sociopolitical) work correctly.

he wants to see the first amendment function with autistic precision. he wants to remove any messy personalization because it interferes with that purity. he wants fully transparent moderation and proof of fairness. he doesn't like the idea that one organization has such control and he likely wants to turn the company into a dao. he's searching for a problem to apply cryptocurrency technologies to.

what i think he doesn't get are the messy realities of the real world. we're already on the cusp of world war iii, can we chill for just a few minutes?

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#502
post #85
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If North Korea offered $60 billion to buy Twitter would Twitter be forced to sell? Not comparing Musk to NK, but money isn't the only consideration when an offer to sell comes in.

Indeed, what happens when Elon starts his own platform instead and uses some of the ~$40 billion he'd otherwise buy Twitter with instead on paying top users of Twitter to exclusively use his platform instead?

Do you remember Google Plus? Google had excellent financing and an existing team of excellent software developers and couldn't pull of a credible alternative to facebook.

The world is littered with the expensive corpses of failed software.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#503

Wow, my prediction is Musk will walk away, Twitter stock price will tank, and Twitter will be flooded with thousands of shareholder lawsuits (for breaching their fiduciary duty).

As is detailed by many smart people below, fiduciary duty lawsuits are difficult to win. They'd pretty much have to have board members emailing each other saying "This would be in the best interest of shareholders, but let's screw them over instead" This was an epic debacle. Musk invested 4 BILLION dollars in an asset of questionable value, because "free speech". If he times it right he could come out ahead financial…

I'm not getting the impression that his actions are the result of a highly polished corporate public personna, I think his actions make way more sense if you imagine that he's just some regular, kinda bright, really eccentric asshole with more money than god.

Like, you can probably imagine at least one person you know acting this way if they discovered a genie.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#504
post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He will sell his 9% He will start something to compete against Twitter. Twitter will be stuck with their current management and cultural problems.

Nobody will switch from Twitter to some knock off he or anyone else makes. (By “nobody” I mean both nearly 0% of users and only people who will not be missed on Twitter)

There is definitely a network effect around scale and populations of users.

Gettr seems to be making positive inroads on the conservative/libertarian population, particularly those for whom twitter is not an option due to previous banning/shadow-banning, and de-boosting.

As I expect there to be consolidation between truth social, gettr, parler, and others, think this will only get stronger.

Part of this is also that younger populations are preferring tiktok to Twitter imo.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#505

I don’t understand how any board can implement a “poison pill”, not just Twitter but Netflix and others, and not be found working against the interest of shareholders. Can anyone help me understand? You’re categorically changing the profile of the stock. This has a chilling effect on large investors, including but not limited just to Musk, right? Vanguard, for example, has just had its range of further investment lim…

>I don’t understand how any board can implement a “poison pill”, not just Twitter but Netflix and others, and not be found working against the interest of shareholders. Can anyone help me understand? So let's say you put in a shareholder rights plan that allows all current shareholders to buy 10 new, discounted shares whenever a new shareholder reaches 20% ownership and for every share they buy from then on. That eff…

More likely he'll withdraw offer and sell his stake, causing share price to drop and all shareholders losing real and potential gain.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is incorrect. the price going up is a reflection of the market's believe about the % likelihood of a deal. for example at market close of $45.08, the market is betting there is a $45.08/$54.20 = 83% chance that this transaction goes through. there are certainly individual stockholders who are buying because they like his involvement, but that is tiny compared to people buying and selling a very near-term bet

> at market close of $45.08, the market is betting there is a $45.08/$54.20 = 83% chance that this transaction goes through. This assumes the price without the transactions goes to $0.00!

yes, there are many factors that can influence a valuation. and in different price ranges, different factors will have different weights. since the price is not $0 today and is relatively close to the potential transaction price, the % likelihood of a transaction has much more influence.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#507

Wow, my prediction is Musk will walk away, Twitter stock price will tank, and Twitter will be flooded with thousands of shareholder lawsuits (for breaching their fiduciary duty).

As is detailed by many smart people below, fiduciary duty lawsuits are difficult to win. They'd pretty much have to have board members emailing each other saying "This would be in the best interest of shareholders, but let's screw them over instead" This was an epic debacle. Musk invested 4 BILLION dollars in an asset of questionable value, because "free speech". If he times it right he could come out ahead financial…

An L for Twitter inc, perhaps. OP did not say shareholders would win their lawsuits. Elon obviously has zero interest in a financial return. It's clear he genuinely believes Twitter could be better, especially around free speech.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As is detailed by many smart people below, fiduciary duty lawsuits are difficult to win. They'd pretty much have to have board members emailing each other saying "This would be in the best interest of shareholders, but let's screw them over instead" This was an epic debacle. Musk invested 4 BILLION dollars in an asset of questionable value, because "free speech". If he times it right he could come out ahead financial…

I'm not getting the impression that his actions are the result of a highly polished corporate public personna, I think his actions make way more sense if you imagine that he's just some regular, kinda bright, really eccentric asshole with more money than god. Like, you can probably imagine at least one person you know acting this way if they discovered a genie.

"asshole"

What has he done to deserve that label?

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also believe that Musk will walk away and the stock will tank. Musk’s recent stock purchase and discussion about joining the board made the price jump significantly. You’re right that there’s no obvious reason that his involvement should change Twitter’s value, but the market appears to think otherwise. If he walks away, at a minimum, I would expect that the stock price will drop to what it was before he started pl…

> For instance, he’ll stop Tweeting, which should have a measurable impact on the number of people actually using Twitter regularly. There are that many people whose engagement depends entirely upon whether Elon Musk is actively tweeting? I don't use Twitter much, but that seems pretty amazing if true.

You might be imagining the wrong model, its not the people that'll leave if Elon Musk does, but the entire cesspool around repackaging hot takes and reactions to his actions and tweets goes away too. I have a feeling its a lot of content that would dry up.

Re: Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company

#510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why will the price tank? None of this changes the value of Twitter if he walks away.

Musk has basically hinted that he might sell his 9% stake if the deal doesn't go through. a selloff of that volume would definitely change the value of Twitter.

No, only the price.
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