One person never has to worry about being banned from Twitter. And maybe nobody else in the future will have to Tweet with that fear going forward.
On Monday, it became official as the board of directors for Twitter unanimously accepted Elon Musk’s $44 billion offer to buy out Twitter and take the company private in a deal that will pay shareholders $54.20 per share upon closing. That price is 38% higher than what Twitter was trading at on April 1 of this year, a day before word leaked that Musk had already purchased 9.2% of the social media giant.
Musk announced over the weekend that he had lined up the $46.5 billion he needed to finance the deal, and it is expected to close this year, assuming everything continues to go smoothly.
Brett Taylor is the chairman of the Twitter board and said that the company “conducted a thoughtful and comprehensive process to assess Elon’s propels with a deliberate focus on value, certainty, and financing.”
What’s next? A whole lot of speculation if Musk will allow banned posters, including Donald Trump, back onto the platform. Musk describes himself as a “free speech absolutist,” and he hasn’t been a fan of CEO (for now) Parag Agrawal.
Here’s part of a statement from Musk.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated. I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
Twitter shares jumped 5% after the announcement.
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