Tesla CEO Elon Musk is getting investor support for the Twitter acquisition.
San Francisco Tesla CEO Elon Musk has secured seven billion dollars from a group of investors for the $ 44 billion takeover of Twitter. Among them are Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, crypto exchange Binance and asset management firms Fidelity, Brookfield and Sequoia Capital, as well as Qatar Holding, according to a stock exchange announcement on Thursday.
Ellison alone, who is considered a friend of Musk, provided about a billion dollars. Venture capital firm Sequoia is providing $800 million, while Dubai-based tech investment firm Vy Capital is providing $700 million. Binance wants to contribute $500 million.
In addition, Saudi Prince Alwalid bin Talal agreed to contribute his stake of almost two billion dollars instead of turning it into money. He had previously turned down a sale to Musk. Musk then asked critical questions about freedom of expression in Saudi Arabia. The prince wrote in a tweet that Musk is a “new friend”.
Earlier, it became known that Musk reduced his margin loan to $ 6.25 billion from $ 12.5 billion and increased his funding commitment to $ 27.25 billion. Musk also said that he is working to bring in more investors, including billionaire Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey. In doing so, it would give existing shareholders the opportunity to contribute their shares to the buyout of the company.
The company’s board of directors had cleared the way for the sale of the platform to Musk. However, the deal will probably not be decided in May: “The deal must be approved by the shareholders, but is not on the agenda of the Annual General Meeting on May 25,” lawyer Andrew Thorpe of the law firm Mintz Levin told Handelsblatt. “At a later date – probably in June or July – there will be an extraordinary shareholder meeting at which Twitter shareholders will vote on the acquisition.“
Musk had announced that he would unleash Twitter’s potential as a “platform for freedom of expression around the globe,” and hinted that he would relax the rules for moderating content in return. According to critics, this could lead to significantly more hate messages and false reports being spread on Twitter.
Musk could temporarily lead Twitter himself
As a result, advertisers worry that their ads could be placed next to harmful or offensive content. The company had written to the advertisers and assured that this would not happen. However, Twitter did not provide any details.
Twitter shares initially rose more than four percent to around $51 on Thursday. However, the share price remained consistently below the offer of $ 54.20 per share made by Musk. Analysts suggested that investors may be afraid that the purchase of Twitter is still bursting. In this case, Musk would have to pay compensation in the amount of one billion dollars.
According to a media report, Musk himself is likely to take over the top post on Twitter for the time being after the takeover. The channel CNBC, citing insiders, reported that Musk could lead Twitter for a few months.
Twitter had initially stated that Musk wanted to work with CEO Parag Agrawal. However, the relationship between the two is considered tense, especially with regard to the question of free expression of opinion and the containment of false information. Saudi Prince Alwalid bin Talal wrote in his tweet that he believes that Musk would be an excellent boss.
Just last week, the board of directors of the US short news service had approved the acquisition by Musk. According to insiders, during the financing talks with banks, the latter has already stated that he wants to find new ways to monetize tweets, and cut executive salaries. At the moment, Twitter has about 217 million users.
