Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk is now a step closer to owning one of the biggest social media platforms in the world. After a period of tense negotiations and concerns over bot accounts on the platform, Twitter’s board of directors has finally approved the deal, with a unanimous recommendation to shareholders to approve the acquisition.
Twitter filed a statement with the Securities Exchange Commission on 21 June in which the company’s board of directors encouraged shareholders to approve the acquisition.
If the shareholders vote to sell the company, they will be selling their stock at a substantial profit. They will be receiving $54.20 for each share of common stock. This is a huge increase over the current price of $38.91 per share.
Twitter’s share price has fluctuated wildly in the time since Musk’s initial proposal to buy the platform back in April.
This new development comes soon after Musk’s first official interaction with Twitter employees. The virtual town hall meeting, which was held on 16 June, saw Musk address the queries and concerns of his prospective employees.
According to the transcript of the meeting obtained by Vox, Musk outlined his plans for expanding the Twitter user base, his concerns over fake accounts, and his overall goals for the platform.
Musk’s deal to buy Twitter and take it private has seen some rocky patches recently, with him threatening to call off the deal if Twitter did not provide evidence that less than 5 percent of the accounts on the platform are bots.
On 9 June, Twitter complied with Musk’s demands by handing over its Firehose API, which is a real-time feed monitoring the posts of every account on the platform.
Though the deal seems to be moving forward, there may still be obstacles in the way, In the recent Qatar Economic Forum hosted by Bloomberg, Musk mentioned that there were still several ‘unresolved matters’ that had to be addressed before the deal can go through.
Though the deal seems to be moving forward, there may still be obstacles in the way, In the recent Qatar Economic Forum hosted by Bloomberg, Musk mentioned that there were still several ‘unresolved matters’ that had to be addressed before the deal can go through.
Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that the Twitter shareholders’ vote would be held in late July or early August.
(With inputs from agencies)
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