Elon Musk Pulls Out of $44 Billion Twitter Acquisition Deal, Says Company Hasn’t Provided Required Data on Bots, Spam Accounts, and Other Problems

I like the theory that this was an elaborate scam to allow him to cash out Tesla shares while they were riding high.

It will only cost him $1B in breakup fees and subsequent legal fees, but that penalty was probably made up by the share price at the time of the deal.
 
Brian_B said:
I like the theory that this was an elaborate scam to allow him to cash out Tesla shares while they were riding high.

It will only cost him $1B in breakup fees and subsequent legal fees, but that penalty was probably made up by the share price at the time of the deal.
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What was preventing him before? Plus, did he cashed out ( as is cash in bank) or just purchased 10% of a company that is also plenty down in stock value? I hope he gets screwed out of 44b out of his own wealth. Supposed investors he had ' lined up' are probably running for the hills.
 
Uvilla said:
What was preventing him before?
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I think when you have that much stock in a company (he is still the largest single shareholder in Tesla), you need *reasons* to just cash it out; otherwise the SEC comes sniffing. The classic Pump & Dump scheme comes to mind.

He did cash out about 8.4B in stock, 7.1B was in "financing" from other wealthy investors (basically commitments to buy large amounts of TWIT shares after the sale). Up to 12.5B was a loan, with the rest of his TSLA shares as collateral. 21B was other unspecified equity (Source)

I am not 100% certain on that though, I've never had the luxury of being a multi-billionaire with all my wealth tied up in the stock market. But if he just up and sold Billions worth of stock one day, and it happened to be on a high water mark -- it has a good chance of causing the stock to tank, he would probably get brought up on charges of stock manipulation (maybe not found guilty, but at least investigated), and generally people would be very unhappy with him.

But if he's doing it to buy some useless web service not many people really care too much about and makes a huge stink about that -- everyone is distracted by the shiny object in one hand, and the market doesn't notice he just dumped an assload of shares and won't react to that.

FYI -- TSLA stock still fell when he announced he was unloading a bunch, but it didn't nose dive and recovered fairly quickly. And even at that he had to get Board approval for the sale, and the SEC was notified.
 
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He had this one chance to prove that he is not a con-man, he failed.
 
MadMummy76 said:
He had this one chance to prove that he is not a con-man, he failed.
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Because Tesla, Space X, and The Boring company don't count. All of those are people working and not getting paid or making anything at all. Pure scams... *rolls eyes*
 
Grimlakin said:
Because Tesla, Space X, and The Boring company don't count. All of those are people working and not getting paid or making anything at all. Pure scams... *rolls eyes*
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Yeah, they count. They show how successful of a conman he is. Tesla which is about 100 times overvalued. Space X which gets tech influencers hard, but thus far failed to produce most of what they promised, and is on the verge of bankruptcy according to Musk. But those are at least actually producing something, unlike the boring company which is a farce, acting like they invented tunnels. Promising 10 times faster 10 times cheaper, delivering 10 times slower at exactly the same cost. Yeah, he really changed the world with that one.

That people still don't see him as the fraud that he is is only proof how good he is at lulling people.

He is the master of overpromising and underdelivering, if delivering anything at all, because in most cases he doesn't, just passes on his lunacy to gullible investors, who are left holding the bill at the end of the....tunnel.

His ideas are on par with solar roadways, or are you also on board with that grift?
 
He didn't con anyone. Twitter board refused to provide information they were contractually obligated to. Specifically the bot account info. Now Musk can sue them. So can all the shareholders. Twitter board is royally boned right now.
 
Riccochet said:
He didn't con anyone. Twitter board refused to provide information they were contractually obligated to. Specifically the bot account info. Now Musk can sue them. So can all the shareholders. Twitter board is royally boned right now.
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Maybe not the best source but was on top of the search heap. Looks like Twitter provided everything and anything they were asked for:

gizmodo.com

Elon Tells Twitter He Needs Moar Data, Twitter Gives It to Him

The company reportedly provided Musk with a new tranche of data after his team claimed they couldn't properly run tests to discover evidence of bots.
gizmodo.com gizmodo.com
 
Brian_B said:
Maybe not the best source but was on top of the search heap. Looks like Twitter provided everything and anything they were asked for:

[/URL][/URL]
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I don't know. Just that every article out there has statements from Musk's lawyer on the matter.

In the letter, disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Skadden Arps attorney Mike Ringler said that “Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations.”

Ringler claimed that Twitter did not provide Musk with relevant business information he requested, as Ringler said the contract would require. Musk has previously said he wanted to assess Twitter’s claims that about 5% of its monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) are spam accounts.

“Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information,” Ringler claimed. “Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information.”
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Seems to me that Twitter's board has been dragging there feet while they figure out a way to "cook the books".
 
Riccochet said:
Seems to me that Twitter's board has been dragging there feet while they figure out a way to "cook the books".
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Very likely. I doubt either side has clean hands in this.

From the charge the Musk lawyers are claiming, it has a very, very low successful prosecution rate.

(Link, cached)
 
When I was a kid I used to look up to some pro athletes. Then I found out they were drug abusers (coke, ‘roids, PEDs, etc). I stopped idolizing people thereafter. Muskovites will learn one day, too. Maybe.
 
I far from idolize the man. But I do appreciate that he can take the tech dreams and desires of many and turn those into properly funded initiatives. To me that holds value in a world where innovation is too often dolled out in bite sized chunks all to maintain maximum profit.
 
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