Elon Musk to buy Twitter for R690 billion | Fin24

His proposal was met with skepticism on Wall Street because, while he said it was his “best and final” offer, it lacked any details on financing. Even though Musk is the world’s richest person, much of his fortune is tied up in Tesla stock. 

Twitter adopted a poison pill as a measure to prevent Musk from buying up more than 15% of the company, while giving the board more time to consider his bid and plot its next move.

Late last week, Musk gave more details on his financing plans, saying in a securities filing that he had lined up Morgan Stanley and other lenders, which were offering $13 billion in debt financing plus another $12.5 billion in loans against his stock in Tesla, as well as pledging to contribute an additional $21 billion of his own money through equity financing.

It’s unclear whether Musk, who heads Tesla and Space Exploration Technologies, would consider selling part of his stake in one of his prized companies to acquire Twitter.

In a whirlwind of news in just over two weeks, it’s been hard to tell whether Musk, 50, would follow through on his offer. Musk is a prolific tweeter – posting a mix of memes, questions and barbs – and has vowed to turn Twitter into a bastion for free speech. But a previous claim that he had secured funding to take Tesla private, an episode that drew a lawsuit from the US Securities and Exchange Commission, cast a shadow over his Twitter bid. 

Musk is one of Twitter’s most prominent and outspoken users. He is known for sometimes cryptic or mysterious tweets, lobbed at all hours of the day, on everything from cryptocurrencies to space travel to whether Twitter should have an edit button. While Musk has tweeted about plans to authenticate Twitter users and stop paying its board a salary, he’s not publicly outlined much about how he’d manage the company.

He has said his main motivation in buying Twitter is to ensure the principles of free speech, which he says is “essential to a functioning democracy”.

Twitter is scheduled to report earnings on Thursday, “which likely will not be rainbows and smiles thus putting further pressure on the company around this game of high stakes poker with the Musk bid looming”, said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, in a note to investors on Sunday.