Elon Musk offers $41 billion to take Twitter private

Elon Musk on Wednesday night sent a letter to Twitter offering to take the company private for $41 billion, after calling it his “best and final offer”. Twitter’s board of directors met on  Thursday afternoon for a careful review of the proposal. Musk turned down an offer to join the board. The Twitter board of directors is reportedly considering a poison pill to block Musk’s takeover. Elon Musk’s offer represents a 38 per cent premium to the closing price of Twitter’s stock on April 1 but is below last year’s highs. Shares in Twitter jumped 5.6 per cent at the opening bell on Thursday to $48.40 below Musk’s offer price.  Musk has amassed over 80 million Twitter followers since joining the site in 2009.

Elon Musk owns 91. Per cent of Twitter meaning, he is still the largest individual shareholder.  In the meanwhile, The Vanguard group upped its stake to 10.3 per cent in Twitter. Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley increased their stake in the company at some point during the first quarter, according to SEC filings made on April 8. Vanguard previously reported owning 67.2 million shares of Twitter or about 8.4 per cent of the company as per FactSet. Vanguard’s holding is now worth $3.78 billion based on Twitter stock’s closing price on Wednesday. Other owners of large quantities of Twitter stock include Morgan Stanley, Fidelity, and Black Rock.

Musk on Thursday after Tweeted a poll asking: “Taking Twitter Private at $54.20 should be up to shareholders, not the board. “

 Over 80 per cent of the one million votes cast in the first hour said yes.

If Twitter were to reject Musk’s bid, which analysts argue it cannot afford to do, the billionaire may target stockholders by either seeking proxy votes or purchasing their shares. A stock exchange filing revealed  Tesla chief Elon Musk has launched a hostile takeover bid for Twitter, offering to buy 100 per cent of its stock and take it private.

Musk currently holds 73m 486, 938 shares of Twitter, valued at more than $3.3billion based on the stock’s current market value of $45.85  per share.