Twitter’s board is said to seriously consider Elon Musk’s bid

Twitter may be getting closer to a deal with Elon Musk.

The social media service’s board of directors met on Sunday morning to discuss Mr. Musk’s matter $46.5 billion unsolicited bid to buy the company, after he started queuing sponsor for his offer last week, two people with knowledge of the situation said. The funding is a turning point for how Twitter’s board views Musk’s $54.20 a share bid, allowing the company’s 11 board members to seriously consider Musk’s offer he, these people said.

Twitter’s board of directors scheduled to meet Musk’s side later on Sunday to discuss other aspects around a potential deal, the people who spoke on condition of anonymity said because they did not. allowed to discuss confidential information. Those details include deadlines for closing any potential deals and any fees that would be paid if the deal was signed and subsequently broken.

Any deal remains uncertain, but the willingness of the Twitter board to join Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, represents a step forward. Mr. Musk, who has more than 83 million followers on Twitter and began accumulating shares in the company earlier this year, announced his intention to buy the company on April 14 and go private. But his proposal was quickly rejected by Wall Street because it was unclear if he could make money to execute the agreement. Twitter too passed a “poison pill”, a defensive measure that could prevent Mr. Musk from accumulating more shares of the company.

Mr Musk updated his proposal last week, putting pressure on Twitter to take his bid more seriously. In a securities filing made public on Thursday, Mr Musk detailed how he combined financing from investment bank Morgan Stanley and a group of other lenders, which it was offering for sale. 13 billion dollars debt, plus a 12.5 billion dollars in loans against his stock at Tesla, the electric car maker he runs. He is expected to add about 21 billion dollars in equity financing.

Now what once seemed a highly unlikely deal may be more likely. People with knowledge of the situation say the situation regarding Twitter and Musk remains fluid and fast-moving.

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment. In previous public statements, the company said its board is “continuing to conduct a careful, comprehensive and deliberate review to determine the course of action in the best interest of the company.” and all Twitter shareholders.”

Mr. Musk did not respond to a request for comment. The Wall Street Journal previous report Twitter’s reception has increased for Musk’s bid.

Wall Street is likely to view the Twitter board’s openness to Mr Musk’s bid as “the beginning of the end for Twitter as a public company, and now Musk may be on path to corporate acquisition unless a second bidder is involved,” Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, wrote in a note on Sunday.

Musk’s offer to Twitter was a 54 percent premium to the stock price the day before he started investing in the company in late January. But Twitter’s stock has been trading well above Musk’s bid for years.

Some analysts said they expected Twitter’s board to accept only a bid valuing it at a minimum of $60 a share. Twitter shares rose above $70 per share last year when the company announced its goal of doubling salesbut has since dropped to around $48 as investors question the ability to hit those goals.

Mr. Musk, 50, has made it clear that he sees many flaws in Twitter as a social media service. He has said he wants to “transform” the company into a “global free speech platform” and that it requires major improvements in its products and policies.

Mr Musk has attempted to negotiate with Twitter using the service itself, in several tweets threatening that he could give his bid directly to the company’s shareholders in a so-called “public bid”. “. A public offering is a hostile maneuver in which an outside party circumvents a company’s board of directors by requiring shareholders to sell shares directly to them.

He has also been acting erratically on the platform, raising concerns about how he might manage the service if he were in charge of it. On Saturday, Mr. Musk targeting billionaire Bill Gates, saying that Mr. Gates has taken a “short” position on Tesla stock, which means Mr. Gates is betting that the carmaker’s stock will fall. On Sunday, Mr Musk tweeted that he had “continueFrom mocking Mr. Gates.

Even so, Mr. Musk maintains a friendly relationship with a number of senior members of Twitter. Over the weekend, Musk exchanged friendly tweets with Jack Dorsey, the company’s co-founder and board member. Mr. Dorsey stepped down as Twitter’s chief executive in November and will be leaving its board soon.

Both men share similar views on cryptocurrencies and on promoting more freedom of expression online. As Mr. Musk briefly flirted with joining Twitter’s board this month, Mr. Dorsey tweeted, “I’m really excited that Elon is joining the Twitter board! He cares deeply about our world and the role Twitter plays in it.”

On Friday, Block, a financial services firm led by Mr Dorsey, revealed that he had changed his title at the company from chief executive officer to “Head of the Block”. That change seems to have resonated with Mr. Musk.

“Your new title at Block is fire,” Mr Musk tweeted of Mr Dorsey on Saturday, using two flame emojis to signify his approval. Last year, Mr. Musk changed his title at Tesla from CEO to Technology.