Elon Musk Buys Twitter | Major Shareholding To Owning The Platform — A Complete Timeline

The Tesla Inc CEO was finally taken on board after it sank under pressure from its current investors making Elon Musk the Twitter CEO.

Elon Musk buys Twitter for $44 billion dollars. (Image: Twitter)

Source : Twitter/@teslaownersSV

New Delhi: Elon Musk is set to become the new owner of micro-blogging platform Twitter. Subject to other shareholders' approval, the $44 billion deal is expected to close sometime later this year.

Musk, who has been an avid user of the platform himself, has been very insistent that the company needs to be taken private in order to be a genuine platform of free speech. His offer did become very attractive to the platform after he began to meet them over the last few days. Twitter finally took the Tesla CEO on board after it sank under pressure from its current investors, according to Reuters.

"I don't believe that the proposed offer by Elon Musk ($54.20 per share) comes close to the intrinsic value of Twitter given its growth prospects," Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a Twitter shareholder, had tweeted on April 14.

According to the Reuters report, another shareholder Sahm Adrangi, who holds 0.15% of the company shares through hedge funds, said “$54.20 a share and be done with it”. Adrangi is a portfolio manager at Kerrisdale Capital Management, who has been investing in the company since 2020. 

Timeline Of Twitter Takeover by Elon Musk 

• January to March 2022: Elon Musk reportedly started buying shares in Twitter from January 2022. By March 14, Musk had accumulated an over 5 per cent stake in the company as per news agency AP.
• March: Elon Musk started to criticise Twitter for “failing to adhere to free speech”. “Worried about de facto bias in the Twitter algorithm having a major effect on the public; Twitter algorithm should be open source,” Musk tweeted on March 24.
• US securities regulators toward the end of the month said they have authority to subpoena Tesla CEO Elon Musk about his tweets and urged a federal judge not to let the executive get away with tweeting with abandon.
• After a user asked Musk to create a platform adhering to free speech, Musk posted a poll asking whether he should create a platform. Maximum users voted in favour.
• April: Musk bought 9.2% shares of Twitter, reportedly worth $2.9 billion. Musk later posted another poll the same day, asking users if they wanted an edit button. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal urged users to “vote carefully”, saying the "consequences of this poll will be important”.
• Twitter appointed Elon Musk as a board member on April 5, and former CEO Jack Dorsey welcomed the Tesla CEO to the company. Parag Agrawal announced Elon Musk was appointed to Twitter’s board in a series of tweets.
• Musk posted the infamous ‘Is Twitter dying?’ tweet, talking about highly followed members like Katy Perry and Barack Obama who rarely post anything
• Twitter made a poison-pill offer trying to prevent him from raising his shares in the company to above 15% without negotiating a deal with its board. Musk in response threatened to launch a tender offer that he could use to register Twitter shareholder support for his bid.
• Following this, Twitter board held a meeting on April 24. The company began to take his offer seriously after Musk presented his financial details.
• April 25: The company sealed the deal, with Musk with a buyout of $44 billion dollars.