Musk Speaking To Co-Investors As Twitter Board Adopts “Poison Pill” To Thwart Hostile Takeover | ZeroHedge
… one possible response is for Elon to be joined by one or more like-minded, anti-censorship investors such as Peter Thiel who either build up stakes through the poison pill 15% limit in the process making a management and board replacement by proxy vote the simple outcome, or they just raise the takeover price to a level that even the woke Twitter board can not reject.
Or skip the whale investor approach entirely, and open up twitter to a mass investor buyout, in the form of a DAO, where “token holders will get to vote on what’s trending and who gets verified.”
This article is a mess. It really is enlightening to read a journalistic take on a subject about which one knows a bit and the public mind is both excited and confused.
For one thing, Elon can’t avoid triggering the pill just because he teams up with like minded financial partners, or at least not if the pill is at all well drafted. So Elon can join up with Peter Theil, but that will count toward his 15 percent pill triggering amount, or that’s my shot from the hip anyway.
As for “open[ing] up twitter to a mass investor buyout,” using a Decentralized Autonomous Organization — no idea how that would work, and probably neither do the Delaware courts or the SEC, or the institutional shareholders. But it seems like a great idea to me! Personally, I think American capitalism drove into the ditch of ESG- and Big Index Fund dominated crony capitalism decades ago and a big shakeup would be just the thing. Let’s have some decentralized, free market action, by all means! No way, however, will it happen. But cherish these moments of hopefulness before that becomes clear.
As to the last suggestion — this will set the securities lawyers’ hair on fire. All I see are difficulties if Elon wants to tweet about his offer to his twitter followers while the offer is ongoing. Maybe it’s possible at some point, but it won’t be easy.
In a way, this whole deal is a perfect test case for whether it’s even possible for the richest man in world to buy a company *from its owners, the shareholders* in order to do something — like promote free speech (!) — that ought to be at least allowed, like, legal. But the answer may well be, no. Pardon me if I find this deeply hilarious and sad. Should it be possible? Of *course* it should be! Well, it’s not over yet.