Twitter board to evaluate Musk's 'unsolicited, non-binding' $43B offer
Darpan News Desk IANS, 14 Apr, 2022 02:59 PM
San Francisco, April 14 (IANS) Twitter on Thursday said it will carefully review the "unsolicited, non-binding" proposal from Tesla CEO Elon Musk to acquire the micro-blogging platform for more than $43 billion.
"The Twitter Board of Directors will carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the Company and all Twitter stockholders," the micro-blogging platform said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, Musk made an offer to buy 100 per cent of Twitter at $54.20 per share, a 54 per cent premium over the closing price of Twitter on January 28, 2022, the trading day before Musk began investing in the company.
This is a 38 per cent premium over the closing price of Twitter on April 1, 2022, the trading day before Musk's investment in Twitter was publicly announced.
"I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy," Musk said in the filing.
"However, since making my investment I now realise the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company."
In a letter to Twitter's board, Musk said he believes Twitter "will neither thrive nor serve societal imperative in its current form".
"If the deal doesn't work, given that I don't have confidence in management nor do I believe I can drive the necessary change in the public market, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder," he added.
Earlier this week, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced that Musk will not join the board of the company, saying that "he believes it is for the best".
The Indian-origin CEO last week said the micro-blogging platform has appointed Musk to its board of directors.
Musk, who acquired 9.2 per cent share in the micro-blogging platform for nearly $3 billion, is limited from buying more than 15 per cent of Twitter's stock.
The group says employees who aren’t fully vaccinated as of Oct. 12 will be placed on unpaid leave of absence. Vaccination will also be required for new hires, students and other personnel working with the companies.
Party leaders hit the road last week just as the fourth wave began to surge and Kabul fell to the Taliban, prompting a desperate push to ramp up evacuation efforts for Canadian expats and former Afghan support staff at the capital's airport. That effort ended early Thursday morning.
The BC Wildfire Service says some of the major blazes — such as White Rock Lake, Tremont Creek and Lytton Creek — were still classified as out of control.
That is particularly the case for a housing market made ever hotter by the pandemic that drove more Canadians to want bigger homes and bigger yards. For younger Canadians, and those with lower incomes the pre-pandemic pipe dream of home ownership was pushed even further out of reach.
There are 5,356 active cases of COVID-19 in the province and 154,669 people who tested positive have recovered. Of the active cases, 139 individuals are in hospital and 75 are in intensive care.
Fire and rescue personnel determined that one person had sustained "catastrophic" injuries, but it was still too dangerous to remove debris within the construction site in order to recover the body, Sgt. Peter DeVries said in an interview.
