Elon Musk Explores Tender Offer for Twitter

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is reportedly exploring a tender offer for Twitter, and has secured financing for the deal including $25.5 billion in loans from major banks. However, analysts warn that the Twitter board’s “poison pill” defense may still prevent a takeover.

A tender offer is an open offer to the shareholders of a company to sell their shares to a bidder at a specified price. If enough shareholders sell to Musk, he could theoretically accumulate enough to acquire a controlling stake in the company.

Even if this occurs, Twitter’s “poison pill” defense would still be activated, allowing other shareholders to buy more shares at a discounted price, diluting Musk’s stake.

BREAKING: Elon Musk has

1. $25.5B in financing for Twitter from a group of banks led by Morgan Stanley—includes $12.5B in margin loan against his Tesla shares.

2. The rest of the money ($21 B) is coming out of his own pocket. (SEC filing)

Translation: THIS GUY IS SERIOUS.

— Trish Regan (@trish_regan) April 21, 2022

Morgan Stanley, which is Twitter’s third-largest stakeholder, is leading Musk’s new effort — although the tech billionaire has yet to decide whether to go forward with the tender offer.

In a filing with the SEC, Musk communicated that he had yet to decide whether to make a tender offer or pursue a different course of action.

Musk teased the new strategy in a tweet last week, posting the song lyric “Love Me Tender,” leading to speculation that a tender offer was imminent.

In a number of public statements, Musk has said that the motivations behind his Twitter takeover attempt lie in his commitment to free speech.

Describing himself as a free speech absolutist, and declaring free speech to be “important to the future of human civilization,” Musk has said that Twitter in is current form is failing to live up to its potential as the global town square.

In his initial offer to the Twitter board, Musk said he believes “free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” but that Twitter will “neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.”

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.