Business & Economy

Twitter board urges shareholders to approve sale to Musk

New York, Jun 21 (EFE).- The Twitter board of directors made a unanimous recommendation that shareholders vote approve the sale of the platform to Elon Musk for $44 billion, the company said Tuesday in a filing with the United States Security and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In comments earlier Tuesday by video link to the Qatar Economic Forum, Musk cited shareholders’ verdict as one of “three things that need to be resolved before the transaction can complete.”

The offer made in April by the world’s wealthiest person – $54.20 per share – represents a significant premium over Twitter’s share price of $39.31 prior to Musk’s acquisition of 9 percent of the company.

Twitter shares closed last Friday at $37.78, 30 percent less than the price offered by Musk.

Besides the question of how shareholders will vote on the offer, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX repeated Tuesday his concern about the number of spam and fake accounts on Twitter.

Twitter estimates the proportion of bogus accounts at no more than 5 percent, but Musk said that the figure was inconsistent with “most people’s experience when using Twitter.”

“We’re still awaiting a resolution on that matter, and that is a very significant matter,” the South African-born billionaire said.

Observers have suggested that Musk hopes to use the issue to acquire Twitter for less money, but board chair Bret Taylor said last week that management remained “committed to the transaction under the agreed upon terms.”

Last Thursday, Musk took part in a virtual town hall open to Twitter’s more than 7,500 employees.

The mogul spent about an hour outlining his vision for Twitter and responding to questions submitted in advance by employees, maintaining that the platform should permit “lawful but awful” content while simultaneously striving to ensure that users will be “comfortable.”

Musk said that he would like to see Twitter’s daily active user base, now around 230 million, expand to “at least a billion people,” and did not rule out the possibility of layoffs at Twitter.

“Right now, costs exceed the revenue, so that’s not a great situation to be in. But anyone who’s obviously like a significant contributor should have nothing to worry about,” he said. EFE

syr/dr

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