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Elon Musk haggles over price for Twitter

2022-05-17T11:16:00.515Z


Elon Musk turns the planned Twitter takeover into a discount battle. The richest person in the world announced that he wanted to talk about the price again. Reason: He distrusts the information on fake accounts.


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Twitter and Musk

Photo: Andrea Ronchini / Pacific Press Agency / IMAGO

First he announced that he would put the Twitter deal on hold, now Elon Musk is also coming out with the reason: He wants to talk about the price again.

"You can't pay the same price for something that's a lot worse than what's advertised," the Tesla CEO said at a conference in Miami.

He is biting the accusation that the online service is giving too few numbers of fake accounts - i.e. accounts that are not backed by real people.

Business can't go ahead until Twitter boss Parag Agrawal proves that such profiles actually make up less than five percent of the user base, Musk wrote on Twitter on Tuesday.

He made his approximately $ 44 billion purchase offer in the belief that the official information from Twitter was correct.

Twitter not only mentioned the estimate of less than five percent bot and fake accounts in the latest quarterly report – but has been operating with this number for years.

According to his own statements, Musk assumes at least 20 percent of the accounts.

Twitter boss Parag Agrawal now tweeted that the number "is well below five percent" of the 229 million users.

Currently, Twitter users are not required to reveal their real identities when signing up.

Musk has been bringing the alleged false information about fake and spam accounts to the fore since last Friday.

So he declared the deal “temporarily suspended” – while it is legally questionable whether he can even unilaterally put the agreement with Twitter on hold.

And whether incorrect information about the number of fake accounts really counts as such serious misinformation about the Twitter business that Musk can change the terms of the deal or call off the takeover.

Musk's statements were followed by the fall in price

Musk then raised a lower bid on Monday after Twitter's share price plummeted.

Musk had agreed with Twitter's board of directors on a takeover at a price of $54.20 per share.

In premarket US trading on Tuesday, the stock started at just $36.35, according to Musk's continued statements.

At the conference, the 50-year-old explained that the more questions he asked on Twitter, the greater his concerns.

How is it possible that advertisers even know exactly what they are getting for their money.

"This is fundamental to Twitter's financial health."

For the takeover attempt to be successful, Musk is dependent on enough shareholders wanting to sell him their shares.

Twitter and Musk previously wanted to complete the acquisition by the end of the year.

In the past few months, he has already bought a good nine percent stake in Twitter on the stock exchange.

The boss of the electric car manufacturer Tesla wants to take Twitter from the stock exchange.

According to insiders, he has already said in the financing talks with banks that he wants to find new ways to make money from tweets and cut executive salaries.

With Trump on freedom of speech

At the same time, Musk declared that he wanted to make Twitter a haven for freedom of expression and also let the banned former US President Donald Trump back on the platform.

Should Musk ultimately reverse the Twitter takeover, he'll have to pay a $1 billion fine.

According to Forbes, the American is worth $265 billion, making him the richest man in the world.

mmq/Reuters/dpa

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2022-05-17

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