Judge approves Twitter's request to hurry along Musk trial to October The Twitter vs Elon Musk trial is set to start in October after a judge granted the social network's request to speed up legal proceedings. Twitter sued the Tesla supremo last week, accusing him of breaching the terms of his offer to buy the website. Musk promised to take over the biz for $44 billion in cash, by offering $54. …
I think the judge's comments over the expedition are also interesting: she's quite clearly considering the damages sustained by Twitter's shareholders. Not only will that affect the trial, it would open the door for civil actions.
Personally, I wish Twitter had ceased to exist years ago and would be happy to see it fold tomorrow but not because Elon Musk decided to play games.
Someone who is trying to make money from that account.
So you know, every company you have an account with that hopes to be paid at some point. And, every website you visit that shows ads (so all of them I presume) whether you have an account there or not.
Its a really common expression, especially in the ad industry.
Yes, I think there's a good chance he'll be given a choice to either complete the purchase he agreed to, or be ordered to pay Twitter a substantial portion of the difference between the share price he agreed to pay and the share price at the time of the judge's ruling, PLUS the $1 billion breakup fee.
That difference is a little over $13 billion today, so I think he could potentially end up liable for up to $10 billion if he refuses to complete the purchase. Its obvious he thought he could threaten to back out and get them to lower the price. Maybe he should have asked his lawyers instead of running his mouth on Twitter.
I wonder if he ever really wanted to own Twitter, or if it was all some sort of attention whoring scheme for himself since like Trump he can never hear his name mentioned by others often enough to satisfy his massive ego? Maybe he's really dumb enough to think he could make up some story about Twitter not giving him enough info about bots and he could back out at the altar.
You credit him with too much intelligence. I think he impulse bought it and now he's realised the economy's heading into the crapper and he can't afford it, and he's trying to return it.
Surely you've seen the same behaviour with more lowly customers? "This product is damaged/broken/doesn't work and therefore you should give me money back."
It was just an excuse to liquidate Tesla stock, without causing a massive panic and making the share price drop too much. Although Musk will have lost ~$17Bn in the value of his remaining stock, he realised $8.5Bn in real money, which is a pretty good exchange rate, vapour to cash.
I think that it's going to be the full $44billion.
Apparently these contracts are like buying a house here in the UK, once exchanged there is no backing out. Twitter's shareholders have been promised $44bill in cash, and them ending up still holding their shares and the cash difference is a lesser outcome. Musk is going to need a phenomenally good reason as to why they shouldn't get their cash in full.
There is also a public interest angle. If the market in company acquisitions and mergers isn't made to work, then the results will be chaotic and damaging to everyone. It's in no one's interests, not even Musk's, for this deal to not be enforced. Someday someone might do the same thing to him...
Allegedly, the $1bn walk-away penalty is only valid if the reason that he's walking away is that he couldn't come up with the money. But he's been able to come up with the money, banks signed on the deal and that they would provide the cash, so he can't use that excuse. In which case there's no contractual limit on how much Twitter can ask.
A shareholder would look at the loss as being the difference between the peak bitcoin price and the actual sale price. That's a much bigger number.
The lunacy is that in Bitcoin, because it isn't very well regulated (if at all), you probably can legally pump and dump. To fail to do that when you've done the pump bit is a missed opportunity. It's a bit like getting hoodwinked by your own Ponzi scheme.
Selling off that much has also caused the price of bitcoin to fall further, so the 25% he's kept, presumably as some kind of hedge, is now also worth less too.
But this is Tesla's money, not just Musk's, which means that the 40% drop in the Tesla share price this year can be partly attributed to the crypto crash, but mainly due to to the stock markets deciding that Musk behaves like a reckless fool.
Another stellar business decision by Musk...
Are they still accepting orders in Bitcoin? Might we accidentally see the situation where the Tesla website is accepting orders for cars not knowing that the Bitcoin price is the equivalent of just a few dollars? If there is a human in the loop setting the bitcoin prices on the Tesla website, and there is a rapid price crash, it could happen!
Edit. Just read they don't accept bitcoin any longer. Pity, could have been fun.
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