Elon Musk buys 9.2% stake in Twitter, making him the largest shareholder

[jct74]

Elon Musk buys 9.2% stake in Twitter, making him the largest shareholder

Chris Isidore
Mon April 4, 2022

Elon Musk recently purchased 9.2% of Twitter stock, according to a filing Monday, making him the largest shareholder in the company.

News of the purchase sent shares of Twitter (TWTR) soaring 22% in early trading. Musk did not disclose what he paid for the shares, but his stake was worth $2.9 billion as of the close of trading Friday, and $3.5 billion after the spike early Monday.

Musk's filing did not disclose the purpose of the purchase or any plans for the company. But he has been a high-profile critic of Twitter policies in the past. Last month he said he was giving "serious thought" to creating a new social media platform.

"Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy," Musk tweeted last month. "What should be done?"

Any time an investor buys 5% or more of a company's shares, they must disclose the purchase in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although a stake of less than 10% in a company is considered "passive" in the eyes of Wall Street, it could signal an effort by Musk to take a more active role in how Twitter is run. That is one of the factors prompting other investors to buy shares and drive up the price early Monday.

"I think he intends to go active and force change at Twitter," said Dan Ives, tech analyst as Wedbush Securities. "This is a shot across the bow at Twitter's board and management team to start discussions."

...

read more:
https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/04/inves...ake/index.html


related:
‘Is a New Platform Needed?’ Elon Musk Follows-Up on Free Speech Poll About Twitter

[Anti Globalist]

Musk should buy Twitter and then disband it.

[jkr]

fire ceo now!

i called him out as a fascist on linked in. i was initially censored...then i posted the definition of fascisms and THE POST WAS RESTORRD!

[Brian4Liberty]

Twitter’s New CEO Gets His First Public Challenge: Elon Musk

Twitter’s new boss and one of the social network’s liveliest denizens will be paying even more attention to each other.

Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla and SpaceX founder, has accumulated a 9.2% stake in Twitter, making him the company’s largest shareholder, according to a new SEC filing. He is already one of the most followed people on the app with over 80 million followers—rivaling Donald Trump’s reach before Twitter expelled the former president—and has been critical of the company, potentially setting up a collision between him and Parag Agrawal, who succeded Jack Dorsey as chief executive in November.

A week ago, Musk released a poll on his Twitter account that eventually received over 2 million votes, questioning whether the company unfairly censors speech, a longstanding conservative complaint.

Agrawal assumed the top job at Twitter by promising to follow through on ambitious revenue and user-growth goals set by Dorsey in his final years. ...
Some of what Dorsey did before his departure came after another high-profile investor appeared. In March 2020, Elliot Management, one of the best-known activist investor firms, bought a stake in Twitter and made a number of demands, hoping to shake up the company. One of those: Dorsey had to leave. Elliot disliked that Dorsey had two jobs, one running Twitter and one running Block, the payments company formerly known as Square.

Twitter swiftly made peace with Elliot, avoiding the protacted corporate battles between that often mark activist campaigns and drag on for months or years. The company agreed to set new, larger targets—and to establish a succession plan for Dorsey. The company prospered during the pandemic, and Dorsey was able to keep his role and depart on his own terms, hand selecting Agrawal to replace him.

It remains to be seen if Agrawal and Twitter’s board will take the same approach with Musk, and Twitter couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. Before becoming CEO, Agrawal had been the company’s chief technology officer; he first joined Twitter as an engineer in 2011.

When Twitter announced Agrawal was getting the CEO role, Musk posted a meme to his account, which did not paint Twitter’s new chief executive in a positive light: The doctored image shows Agrawal as Russian dictator Joseph Stalin and Dorsey as another Soviet leader. By likening Agrawal and Dorsey to the former communist strong men, Musk seemed to underline his belief that the company limits speech.

Musk has established a high profile for himself using the service, but his time on Twitter has been marked by controversy and problems. Most prominently, Musk and Tesla had to agree to some limits around his Twitter presence in 2018 after tweeting about his intentions to take Tesla private. He is now seeking to end those restrictions, though his persona has remained strikingly unchanged. In November, for instance, Musk posted a poll to Twitter asking his followers if he shoulder sell 10% of his Tesla shares. The tweet raised questions about whether Musk is following his agreement with the SEC—and whether the poll was really a PR stunt, with Musk having previously decided to sell the stock regardless of its result.
...
More: https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambr...on-musk-stake/

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1466074646240014340

[TheTexan]

Yes. Freedom can be achieved in two ways.

Secession.

Or hostile takeover

[Brian4Liberty]

Apparently Twitter is firing back today. I couldn't log into my account after going through all of their captcha hoops for the first time since being unbanned. This is one way Twitter has blocked people in the past. It appears they have probably implemented something en mass against people on their "ungood, not woke socialists" lists.

Edit: And to make it more interesting, when the alert comes up to make you go through endless Captchas, it also warns you that Google will be collecting data about you and your device. I mentioned to someone this morning that there will likely be internal sabotage and data theft from Twitter before Musk has a chance to change anything.

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/KatrinaPierson/s...15797166538758

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1510314535671922689

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/jack/status/1510314535671922689

Email. Much of it taken over by the same big companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. Perhaps Jack knows something we don't know, such as potential plans for email censorship and banning. And yes, they already scan all of your personal emails, and often plays games like sending content and people they don't like to spam folders. They are notorious for sending political messages and candidate messages to the spam folder.

[Swordsmyth]

Gotta fake some reform before too many people leave the plantation.

[Anti Federalist]

In an interview with the MIT Technology Review last year, Agrawal said that Twitter no longer considered free speech to be an area of focus.

“Our role is not to be bound by the First Amendment, but our role is to serve a healthy public conversation and our moves are reflective of things that we believe lead to a healthier public conversation,” said Agrawal. “The kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.”

Agrawal said that the priority of the company was “directing” people’s attention to tweets that served “healthy” conversations.

“One of the changes today that we see is speech is easy on the internet. Most people can speak. Where our role is particularly emphasized is who can be heard.”

“The scarce commodity today is attention. There’s a lot of content out there. A lot of tweets out there, not all of it gets attention, some subset of it gets attention. And so increasingly our role is moving towards how we recommend content and that sort of, is, is, a struggle that we’re working through in terms of how we make sure these recommendation systems that we’re building, how we direct people’s attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.”

Why the $#@! are you still in my country?

How about get the $#@! out.

[Anti Federalist]

blocked video

[unknown]

In March 2020, Elliot Management, one of the best-known activist investor firms, bought a stake in Twitter and made a number of demands, hoping to shake up the company. One of those: Dorsey had to leave.

Elliot only held 4% at the time...

Musk needs to appoint Ron Paul as CEO.

[jct74]

Elon Musk to join Twitter’s board of directors, teases ‘significant improvements’

Jessica Bursztynsky
APR 5 2022

Elon Musk will join Twitter’s board of directors after taking a 9.2% stake in the social media company. The news sent Twitter’s shares up more than 3% on Tuesday morning.

“Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” CEO Parag Agrawal said in a tweet Tuesday.

“He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term,” Agrawal added.

Former chief Jack Dorsey praised the move, saying in a tweet that Musk “cares deeply about our world and Twitter’s role in it.”

Musk’s term is set to expire in 2024, according to a filing with the SEC. For his entire board term or 90 days after, Musk cannot be the beneficial owner of more than 14.9% of the company’s common stock outstanding.

...

read more:
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/05/elon...directors.html

[Brian4Liberty]

https://twitter.com/pmarca/status/1511425422034182148

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/michaelmalice/st...17369884774412

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/AmericaRpts/stat...16720694595598

[Anti Globalist]

Prediction: There will be no meaningful change to Musk being on the Board of Directors of Twitter.

[DamianTV]

And the censorship will continue, and Trump will "never" be allowed back on Twitter.

Thus, Twitter is "never" going to be any part of my social life what so ever.

[Occam's Banana]

THREAD: Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1514564966564651008