When Elon Musk took a 9.2% stake in Twitter and then declined to take a position on the board there was much speculation as to his motives for not accepting the role.
Today we found out why he was so reticent, when the Tesla CEO tabled a $43bn, $54.20 cash offer for the business, saying that it was a full and final offer for the business, and that he had no confidence in the current management.
As a member of the board, he would have been precluded from making such a bid. The big question for the Twitter board now is whether to accept a very generous offer for a business that has been a serial underperformer and tends to treat its users with indifference.
Twitter has also come under increasing criticism for its arbitrary censoring of accounts that don’t adopt a particular political narrative, as well as the arbitrary nature of how it verifies users, and deals with fake accounts, over genuine users. From customer service to the monetisation of its user base, Twitter has been a serial underperformer for some time. Maybe a shaking up of the status quo wouldn’t be a bad thing!
Whatever your feelings on Musk he would certainly shake things up, with the only question as to whether he would make things worse or improve them.
Let’s see what happens next.
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