Elon Musk's deal to buy Twitter is in peril

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Washington Post

Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter is in serious jeopardy, three people familiar with the matter say, as Musk’s camp concluded that Twitter’s figures on spam accounts are not verifiable.Musk’s team has stopped engaging in certain discussions around funding for the $44 billion deal, including with a party named as a likely backer, one of the people said. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the ongoing discussions.

Talks with investors have cooled in recent weeks as Musk’s camp has raised doubts about the recent data “fire hose” — a trove of data sold to corporate customers — they received from Twitter. Musk’s team’s doubts about the spam figures signal they believe they do not have enough information to evaluate Twitter’s prospects as a business, the people said.

Now that Musk’s team has concluded Twitter’s figures on spam accounts are not verifiable, one of the people said, it is expected to take potentially drastic action. The person said it was likely a change in direction from Musk’s team would come soon, though they did not say exactly what they thought that change would be. If Musk pulls out of the deal, it will likely trigger a massive legal battle.

The terms of the deal say Musk must pay $1 billion to break up the deal, but legal experts have said that Twitter could try and force Musk to go through with the purchase if his reason for scuttling it is not based on the company’s fundamental business. When he made his offer in April, Musk waived his right to take a deeper look at Twitter’s finances. Twitter spokesperson Trenton Kennedy declined to comment. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/07/07/elon-musk-twitter-jeopardy/

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Thursday news dump. It's like they are jettisoning excess ballast before making the jump to hyperspace or something.

[LittleGirl]

1. Look, twitter's stock price caved

When it was announced he wanted to buy Twitter

And the crypto market caved soon after. Plus Tesla’s stock tanked too.
Musk doesn’t have the 44 billion he promised.

It really is that simple.

[paulkienitz]

12. his reason to buy was just to extract money from Tesla before the bubble popped

and move it into a somewhat less inflated asset. Now he's missed the window.

[Pantagruel]

2. Musk didn't do his homework

Impulsively over bid and now he's trying to weasel out.

[SergeStorms]

20. The smartest man on the planet....

didn't have it all figured out down to the most minute detail?

I'm shocked. Not really. He gets far too much credit for the things he has, and hasn't, done.

[LoisB]

51. "He gets far too much credit for the things he has, and hasn't, done." I could not possibly agree

with your statement more.

[LoisB]

3. Aw shucks

[regnaD kciN]

42. I agree...

[LoisB]

50. Thank you. I forgot mine. I guess Elon will forgive me since he's getting yours.

[Rural_Progressive]

4. Too busy using his little head

[Mawspam2]

25. 10 kids with how many subordinates?

Yep, he's a GQP.

[Cha]

31. hmmm

Please Fight to Save Our Democracy💙 in 2022 & 2024!

[oioioi]

5. "The Great Genius" strikes again

https://vimeo.com/665799574

[BumRushDaShow]

10. What reminded me about that film

was that when I saw the last Jurassic World movie a few weeks ago, I saw how they took the original film's somewhat obscure and minor Lewis Dodgson character, and transformed him into the same type of odd "billionaire"-mimicking-Tim-Cook-mimicking-Fred-Rogers type of character.

[oioioi]

18. Interesting... another example now I think about it...

tbh, I didn't think much of "Spiderhead" but the villain is also an "end-justifies the means CEO-bro" desperate for friends...

[BumRushDaShow]

28. Yup. Same theme.

But what they did was to update it and use the modern "Ted-Talk style" presentation of a milquetoast/sport jacket-over-T-shirt wearing middle-aged wealthy nerd tech industrialist as the archetype.

That was the switch from the older type like Dr. Eldon Tyrell in "Blade Runner" -

and S.R. Hadden of "Contact" -

[Miguelito Loveless]

6. It's called "due diligience"

and you didn't do it.

[CaptainTruth]

13. +1000 Folks I know who worked on M&As were basically horrified.

M&As = Mergers & Acquisitions

They said it was completely nuts.

[Cha]

34. Oh yeah? That's Interesting!

Please Fight to Save Our Democracy💙 in 2022 & 2024!

[CaptainTruth]

47. Yes. I still have friends who are CFOs, CTOs, & some who specialize in VC...

...raising venture capital for startups, plus a couple who specialize in mergers & acquisitions, & one friend who has the unique title of "Business Broker," meaning he specializes in buying & selling businesses.

All of them were stunned at what Elon did, never seen anything like it before.

There were various theories about why he approached it the way he did, but I don't have an hour to explain them all, so I'll just say that many thought he wasn't serious about it, & just wanted to get proprietary business info from Twitter before backing out of the deal, perhaps so he could create his own competing social media site, or perhaps so he could better manipulate Twitter for his own benefit.

[Cha]

49. TY for the "theroies", CT! & it seems he just wanted

to Also fuck with a lot of Twitter people.

There were quite a few I read who cancelled their accounts when the announcement was made.. I remember Howard Dean saying that.. others have a wait and see attitude.

George Takei said he was staying and fighting .. that's been my attitude as well.
Please Fight to Save Our Democracy💙 in 2022 & 2024!:

[TreasonousBastard]

58. I suspect they missed the point if it's going to cost Musk....

a billion if he tosses the deal.

Either he has something hiding out back or he's just another asshole.

How did he build Tesla into the giant it is all by himself? Or did he?

[yaesu]

7. "a 3rd party named as a likely backer," probably the same backer that tRump used, putin. nt

[Mr.Bill]

8. This whole thing was nothing but a stunt

by Musk. He's as bad as Trump in this area.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. This deal has been dead for a while

Musk cannot finance this deal at current price

[CaptainTruth]

11. I won't be surprised if he backs out of it.

It seemed like an impulsive move & I really don't see that he has anything to gain by owning Twitter. It's more about his ego than anything.

I truly hope the deal falls apart. I keep hearing about how bad the fit & finish is on Tesla cars, & based on the ones I've looked at closely I have to agree. He should work on that.

[paulkienitz]

14. What he had to gain was a way to sell Tesla stock at a then-inflated price.

[Cha]

35. So DO I Hope So! An Impulsive Move

to Own the Libs.

Please Fight to Save Our Democracy💙 in 2022 & 2024!

[elias7]

15. Someone here on DU said right after he announced intent to buy that he would back out of it

I thought that sounded about right at the time. Coming to fruition…

[oldsoftie]

22. I said he wouldnt buy. That he was just toying with the company

[jmowreader]

26. That was most of us

Anything Musk tweets with the number 420 in it is, so his $54.20 bid set off a few alarms.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

53. The market was almost immediately showing signs the deal wouldn't go through.

There was too much of a spread between his offer and the then current trade price. Especially for a cash deal with almost zero chance of regulatory challenges.

I have dozens of “in your face libs” Twitter posts bookmarked waiting for the “this tweet didn’t age well” responses.

[2naSalit]

16. Awww!

That's too bad.

[Rebl2]

17. Good

[rurallib]

19. well, he's got 2 new kids to feed so no money for new toys anymore

[kimbutgar]

21. And those Tesla cars have a problem with their batteries where they can catch on fire and are

Difficult to put out. I recently saw a Tesla on fire and it took the firemen three hours to put it out and it scorched the street so bad they had to resurface it.

I wouldn’t buy one of those cars because of him and after seeing that fire.m

[infullview]

23. Good.

[Roy Rolling]

24. Ha

The hunter gets captured by the prey. They don’t call them wolves on Wall Street for nothing. Elon just learned an expensive lesson.

[Rollo]

27. Dodged a bullet...

I had a job interview at Tesla a few years ago.

Fortunately no offer came from it.

It was perhaps the strangest job interview I've ever had.

[mahina]

40. Did you meet Himself?

[regnaD kciN]

43. I had a friend who was a Boeing engineer...

One day, she told all of us that she'd be moving to Long Beach to take a new job at SpaceX, and was utterly thrilled at the opportunity to do "big things."

She left. A couple of months later, she was back up here and at Boeing. She hasn't given any details, but has made it clear she's no Elon fan. Don't know if it had anything to do with the stories that came out right around the same time about the toxic atmosphere for women in high positions at Musk's companies.

[Cha]

29. Oh Fuck, Twitter.. Don't Make

Muskovite "Go Though with the Deal".. you see what an Insane fascist he is.. GD where's your Humanity!

So Thank you, BRDS.. can you explain to me.. are "Spam accounts" the reason Muskie is stalling?

Please Fight to Save Our Democracy💙 in 2022 & 2024!

[BumRushDaShow]

36. He's stalling

because he barely had enough of his own money and that from supposed backers, when he made his initial offer and since then, the stock price lost 30% of the value, his Tesla stock also lost value, and he lost a huge amount of money from his bitcoin holdings when that crashed.

So he doesn't have enough to do the buy and he'll probably have to pay the $1 billion termination fee as part of the original agreement and then deal with breach of contract suits and whatnot.

[Cha]

37. Thank You So Much For Expaining that BRDS!!

So Well! PS I love your Avatar!

It couldn't happen to one of the More Deserving World Fascist Maniacs!

This has been one of the Crises I've been Worried about.. along with Everything the SCOTUS has done and will do.

And all the rest of the Nation Wide Magats

Please Fight to Save Our Democracy💙 in 2022 & 2024!:d

[BumRushDaShow]

38. You're welcome Cha!

The avatar is one of the Van Gough "Sunflowers" (he did a series of them).



My mom had some reproductions of Van Gough's artwork around the house when I was growing up, including one of the "Sunflowers" (which I still have upstairs in one of my bathrooms - a different one from the avatar) and his "Fishing Boats on the Beach" -



My concern with Musk is that he doesn't screw with the finances of his SpaceX since that right now is the only way we'll be getting our astronauts back and forth to the International Space Station. Russia was originally doing it for us under contract after the Shuttle program ended and then rotated some flights in once SpaceX started ferrying people. But Soyuz flights have now pretty much ceased carrying our astronauts with the war and sanctions happening, and the other companies, like Boeing and Blue Origin, are slowly getting up to speed to supplement SpaceX's capability (but aren't there yet).

Otherwise, other than China, that only recently started doing crewed launches, no one else but the U.S. and Russia have done human transport to the station.

[Cha]

41. Mahao for the Van Gough history

in your homes, BRDS!

I did recognize the painting.. I aways loved Sunflowers anyway.. and it seems like so did he.

Yes, I hope Musk doesn't mess up the Astronauts or anything else on our Planet Earth!

Please Fight to Save Our Democracy💙 in 2022 & 2024!:

[rpannier]

52. My understanding is, there already are people organizing to sue

they own twitter stock and have watched it tank.
They're blaming him and his weird behavior for their loses (the whatnot you mention)

[BumRushDaShow]

55. I expect so

especially after he started equivocating in mid-May, a month after the bid announcement (that happened in mid-April).

[Mblaze]

30. What a phony

[PSPS]

32. The whole charade was just another pump-n-dump scheme anyway.

[regnaD kciN]

44. But enough about Elon's private life...

[Mr. Sparkle]

33. It looks like nobody wants Twitter

[mahina]

39. Great.

[Calista241]

45. This is how M&A works. Now the deal might still fail, but he's not going to get any concessions

if they don't think he's willing to walk away.

[niyad]

46. Okay, I am not a financial or marketing genius, but what kind of an IDIOT waives

the right to delve deeply into the finances of a multi-billion $$$$ operation which one is considering purchasing???

There is so much horror going on in the world that I had forgotten this piece of conceited idiocy.

[LudwigPastorius]

48. He's scuttling the deal because he wants to spend more time being a hands-on dad to his nine kids.

BWAHAHAHAHaahaha! Sorry, I couldn't keep a straight face.

Just kidding. John Galt didn't get where he is by changing baby diapers or having heart-to-heart conversations with children.

[NullTuples]

54. I don't want to seem all conspiracy-like but what if...

That massive data dump he was able to acquire is used to identify specific voters and their likely influences via triangulation the way Facebook data was used prior to the 2016 elections? Twitter has a lot of accounts that use their own names.

[BumRushDaShow]

56. I think they had already been doing that and funneling what were probably bot accounts

into those users' feeds (I suppose as "recommended" accounts for them to check out and follow).

I don't know all the ins and outs of twitter since I don't have an account, but I do use their web pages to view tweets (including having to tweak my browser to get past the login pop-ups) so that I can get direct links to news articles, since all of the M$M use it to send breaking news alerts that include links.

[smb]

57. Trying To Wriggle Out Without Forking Over The $1B Penalty

Sorry, Elon, Twitter's lawyers have Moose and Rocco on hand to help you find your check book.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

59. Too bad, so sad

[LetMyPeopleVote]

60. Twitter has hired Wachtell Lipton to sue Musk

Link to tweet