Elon Musk $41B offer for Twitter

[pquinn]

nick30 said:

pquinn said:

As an African/American he sure seems to have a big problem with other African American workers in his companies, at least if the courts are to be believed.

Hang on a minute.

Are you saying he is racist, ‘if courts are to be believed’? Sounds a heavy accusation but interested to hear any proof.

Easy enough for you to Google the Tesla race discrimination cases yourself. Latest update is they got the damages reduced to a mere $15 million.

And that's just for one person. California is busy suing him too.

Edited by pquinn on Friday 15th April 22:18

[TonyToniTone]

nick30 said:

What is it he has said that you think is ‘drivel’?

paedo guy

[OzzyR1]

BoRED S2upid said:

He doesn’t need the cash to buy it. Buy it with debt. Worked for him before.

Probably showing my financial naivety here, but how does this actually work.

If I went to a funder for a large loan, it would have to be secured against my assets - property, business etc.

$41billion is a chunk of change by any measure. Would someone actually have to loan that to Musk to make the purchase? If so, what would they want as security - his shares in Tesla / Space X?

Or does it work in some other way?

[Glasgowrob]

OzzyR1 said:

Probably showing my financial naivety here, but how does this actually work.

If I went to a funder for a large loan, it would have to be secured against my assets - property, business etc.

$41billion is a chunk of change by any measure. Would someone actually have to loan that to Musk to make the purchase? If so, what would they want as security - his shares in Tesla / Space X?

Or does it work in some other way?

generally speaking when you have his kind of wealth you can live on low interest loans and debt and with tax benefits for doing so.

i'd imagine he can borrow 41 billion somewhere without much issue really cant imagine he'll have that sitting in liquid assets even Tesla only has 10 billion on hand

[OzzyR1]

Glasgowrob said:

OzzyR1 said:

Probably showing my financial naivety here, but how does this actually work.

If I went to a funder for a large loan, it would have to be secured against my assets - property, business etc.

$41billion is a chunk of change by any measure. Would someone actually have to loan that to Musk to make the purchase? If so, what would they want as security - his shares in Tesla / Space X?

Or does it work in some other way?

generally speaking when you have his kind of wealth you can live on low interest loans and debt and with tax benefits for doing so.

i'd imagine he can borrow 41 billion somewhere without much issue really cant imagine he'll have that sitting in liquid assets even Tesla only has 10 billion on hand

I assumed something along those lines.

At that level it must be a huge decision for a lender though, $41billion is more than Deutsche Bank's revenue last year.

What happens if he somehow does a Ratner and substantially devalues it?

Can't see any way that would happen but it must be a major consideration for a funder.

[rodericb]

OutInTheShed said:

grumbledoak said:

IAmTheWalrus said:

Be far easier for a man of his wealth to make a new site with similar features and assure people they wont get censored.

It would certainly be cheaper.

But you have to persuade people to move. This is probably easy enough for those who have been censored on Twitter, but those who have not will have a lot of inertia. Meanwhile, any alternates that do start up get marginalized and smeared on Twitter and in the MSM, who have reacted to social media taking their audience by controlling that too.

If Musk buys twitter and starts filling it with his personal flavour of drivel, will current users desert it?

Ha ha, it'll increase activity on that platform. People won't leave. There's a significant core user base who have a significant investment (in content) into it and it'd take a very attractive offer from a competitor to make them leave Twitter. That same competitor would need to be anointed by the government and its agencies as the new outlet for that form of information and also get the larger media companies onboard for "the great migration". Then you've got the rest of the world to worry about....

The increase in holdings by Vanguard is interesting - I wonder of they're doing it for political reasons or simply to profit off the Musk company value distortion effect. I did see a headline somewhere that some former shareholders are going to try suing Musk due to the delay in notifying the authorities as they sold their shares for a lower value than if the market had been notified immediately and the resultant increase also happened immediately....

[pquinn]

rodericb said:

The increase in holdings by Vanguard is interesting

It really isn't if you look at how and why those shares are held.

[rodericb]

pquinn said:

It really isn't if you look at how and why those shares are held.

Okay than - so how and why those shares are held?

[pquinn]

rodericb said:

pquinn said:

It really isn't if you look at how and why those shares are held.

Okay than - so how and why those shares are held?

Well it's to do with them running lots of investment funds (passive index trackers, ETFs - all sorts) and having a massive amount of assets under management. Their aggregate holding looks big as a result.

And it's definitely not some weird New World Order conspiracy like half of Twitter seems to think.

[Heres Johnny]

Dr Jekyll said:

Surely it would be good for diversity for this African/American to take over a huge social media company?

He’s not African American. There is a big distinction being dual nationality SA and US, and being an African American

From Wikipedia
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and formerly Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from any of the black racial groups of Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of enslaved Africans who are from the United States.

For a start, he’s not black, and his ancestry is largely English

[JagLover]

Dr Jekyll said:

Byker28i said:

he has said he wants it to be a platform for all free speech, where anyone can say anything.

His two letters were published, the public and the private one to the CEO where he says he will buy it all or walk away and withdraw his investment

Wall Street Journal are now reporting that Asset manager Vanguard Group recently upped its stake in the social-media platform and now owns 82.4 million shares of Twitter, or 10.3% of the company, overtaking Elon Musk as Twitter’s largest shareholder
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/elon-musk-twitter...

Reminds me of the old joke about the libertarian plot to take over the world and leave us alone.

Musk is a bit of a Tw*t but most of the outrage comes from people who believe in total control over the message and so are worried that someone of a bit more libertarian bent might take over one of their echo chambers.

[grumbledoak]

pquinn said:

Well it's to do with them running lots of investment funds (passive index trackers, ETFs - all sorts) and having a massive amount of assets under management. Their aggregate holding looks big as a result.

Are you suggesting that the huge asset management companies are passive actors or that this is some automatic rebalancing? I think that is a little naive.

[Dr Jekyll]

Byker28i said:

Depends on if you agree with his version of free speech?

Is his 'version' of free speech just free speech for those he agrees with? Because that's an issue whoever owns it.

Or does he believe in free speech full stop, because that's what many of the objectors assume.

Washington Post said:

He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.

[Starfighter]

eliot said:

pump and dump - he won’t buy it

I thought he was being investigated by the SEC for this being done previously and also they are looking at the late official notice of intent on the Twitter deal. The fine on this would be $100k so comfortably within rounding errors for the transactions involved.

The issue with background checks is not what he is concerned about. He lives in a very public place so those coal will be well raked over. A place on the board carry legal responsibilities to act in the interest of the company not in his favour. This includes a max stake in Twitter of 14.9% while he is in the board. I suspect that is why he has withdrawn from a seat on the board.

I did read that the current board had placed a poison pill in the way. Anyone taking a 15% holding without the board approval triggers a discounted rights issue to the other shareholders to effectively dilute the stake of the unwelcome buyer.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/business/twitte...

[Si1295]

https://www.profgalloway.com/elon/

[Beati Dogu]

Dr Jekyll said:

Washington Post said:

He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.

The Washington Post is owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, so I think they should sit this one out.

[Byker28i]

The Onion has stepped in purchasing a 0.000000125% stake In Twitter and is demanding a board seat
Their tweets were funny
https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/15172357065732...

https://www.theonion.com/breaking-the-onion-has-pu...

[Timothy Bucktu]

This is the thing with Musk 'the vapourware salesman'...all is 'wealth' is just Monopoly money largely due to a MASSIVELY over valued Tesla. I mean Tesla is more valuable than all other car manufacturers combined. It's surely unsustainable?
The 41bn bid for Twi-ah simply doesn't exist, or another way of putting it is that the magic stock fairly might decide to wave her wand and make it all disappear at any time. It's not hard earned pocket money on his super saver bank balance.

[rodericb]

He's an interesting fellow and I do not own or plan on owning any goods or services produced by him but I wouldn't put him into the vapourware salesman category completely. I read a news article today about some Tesla thing and it was saying they'll produce 1.3 million cars or something this year. I did see that you no longer get the charging cable with the cars or something and there's a stack of other stuff which was either standard or now isn't, or is new but quite costly (such as the "self drive" software). Yet people keep buying the cars and the shares! Large and established car companies are trying their hand at producing electric cars which don't seem to be getting much headway against Tesla.

The intersecting of the Twitter business into the Musk cult is interesting in that I'd imagine there's a lot of conflicted people about now who are saving the world with their Tesla cars and "saving the world" in supporting moderation on Twitter.

[PeteinSQ]

rodericb said:

He's an interesting fellow and I do not own or plan on owning any goods or services produced by him but I wouldn't put him into the vapourware salesman category completely. I read a news article today about some Tesla thing and it was saying they'll produce 1.3 million cars or something this year. I did see that you no longer get the charging cable with the cars or something and there's a stack of other stuff which was either standard or now isn't, or is new but quite costly (such as the "self drive" software). Yet people keep buying the cars and the shares! Large and established car companies are trying their hand at producing electric cars which don't seem to be getting much headway against Tesla.

The intersecting of the Twitter business into the Musk cult is interesting in that I'd imagine there's a lot of conflicted people about now who are saving the world with their Tesla cars and "saving the world" in supporting moderation on Twitter.

Tesla is starting to be a successful car company but is still hugely overvalued (imho). If they were valued at roughly what VAG is valued at it might make some sort of sense but they're valued at the same as all car companies added together.