Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk at the Tesla Grünheide site in May 2021.
Christophe Gateau/picture alliance via Getty Image
- Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter outright for $54.20 per share this week.
- Twitter’s board met on Thursday to discuss Musk’s $43 billion takeover proposal.
- Twitter is adopting a “poison pill” defense, which will make Musk’s acquisition attempt more difficult.
Twitter isn’t ready to accept billionaire Elon Musk’s offer to buy the social media company and take it private.
Instead, it’s adopting something called a “poison pill” defense, a Friday announcement from the company revealed.
The poison pill tactic, also known as a shareholder rights plan, is used to avoid hostile takeovers by essentially diluting an acquirer’s stake via creating more shares in the market — or allowing other current shareholders to buy more shares at a discount, creating a “pill” that makes a hostile takeover more financially painful to achieve.
Musk made a $43 billion offer to buy the company outright, a regulatory filing revealed on Thursday. Twitter’s board held a meeting on Thursday morning to discuss the $54.20-per-share offer, CNBC reported.
Musk said it was his “best and final” offer in a message to Twitter’s board chair, and that he isn’t “playing the back-and-forth game.” Moreover, he said he would “reconsider” ownership of the nearly 10% stake he already has in Twitter if the deal didn’t go through.
“This is not a threat,” Musk said, “it’s simply not a good investment without the changes that need to be made.”
This story is developing. Check back for updates…
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