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Elon Musk has less than a week to close the Twitter purchase agreement, an initiative that has been dragging on for months due to the second thoughts of the billionaire, best known for being the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. In fact, there are just a few days left until the deadline of 28 October, decided by the judge following the legal dispute initiated by Twitter against Musk, when the latter had retracted saying he no longer wants to buy the social network for $ 44 billion. In early October Musk had announced a further one afterthoughtsaying they want to conclude the acquisition at the amount originally offered.
The announcement of the rethinking came just days before October 17, the start date of the process by which Twitter wanted Musk to deliver on its April commitment to the acquisition. Following that development, Judge Kathaleen McCormick had given Musk more time so that the deal could be concluded without the need to initiate proceedings.
Since then, Musk has heavily restricted his tweets against Twitter, one of his favorite targets over the summer when it looked like he’d definitely given up on the acquisition. According to various observers, the silence of the last few weeks on the subject is probably indicative of the ongoing negotiations between the parties. While unveiling Tesla’s latest cash quarter last week, Musk limited himself to to define Twitter “a resource that has been neglected for a long time, but which has incredible potential.” This potential, according to Musk, would be “several orders of magnitude greater than its current value.”
Over the course of the summer, Musk’s statements and tweets seemed to tell a different story, with Twitter accused of misleading investors, especially regarding the actual number of subscribers to the social network and the amount of people using it each month. . Musk had justified the abandonment of the acquisition by claiming that Twitter had a serious fake account problemnever seriously faced by the company.
Musk has now few days to close the agreement with Twitter and avoid the trial and could hardly get a new postponement, given the concessions already offered by the judge. The trial would also take place in a particular situation, with both parties interested in achieving the same goal, namely the acquisition by Musk, and the judge who would probably agree with Twitter anyway, given that Musk had already formally committed himself in April. for the acquisition. For this reason, many analysts believe that the agreement will be reached within the deadline, or in any case before a possible sentence.
The group of banks that will lend $ 13 billion to Musk appear to be determined to keep the loan commitment, while the rest will be paid by Musk himself and the investors who participate in the acquisition. Among these is also the Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud, who owns already some Twitter shares.
The path to acquiring the social network has been somewhat bumpy and it is unclear how Musk will want to manage the company once he gains control. In the spring he had made various statements on the need to solve the problem of fake accounts, improve the economic performance of the advertisements shown on the social network and possibly introduce some paid features. Various executives at the company could be replaced, and many are wondering if current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal will keep his post after Musk replied to one of his tweets with the emoji showing a poop, however long. smiling.
Twitter has been struggling for some time to grow, both in economic terms and in terms of subscribers, and the performance of its latest data is not encouraging. In the last quarter, the company spent substantially more money on its operation than it made, with a deficit of approximately $ 124 million. Also for this reason, in recent days information, difficult to confirm, had circulated about a plan to cut the staff by about three quarters, which currently consists of 7,500 employees.
