Technology Elon Musk: The Worlds Richest Man
- Thread starter Husky_Khan
- Start date
Like JKR, Musk is just too big to be ostracized and "cancelled". He's basically got the Leftards over a barrel. 
So to be clear, a poison pill isn't an outright rejection. It is limited time, and also is intended to stop him buying more at lower prices prior to the big purchase if they agree to it (which could save him a ton of money).
And the purchase of extra stock by that one company (Vanguard, I think?) isn't necessarily a problem either: it easily could be in expectation of a quick return upon selling to Musk (which would be what I'd do).
Just a little bit of optimism.
And the purchase of extra stock by that one company (Vanguard, I think?) isn't necessarily a problem either: it easily could be in expectation of a quick return upon selling to Musk (which would be what I'd do).
Just a little bit of optimism.
King Krávoka
An infection of Your universe.
This is believable, it wouldn't be unlikely that he turns it into a personality cult. Yet in the event that he changes nothing at all, his presence would be taxing for those who are overinvested in the affairs of twitter, and they would be inclined to critically examine every mistake that twitter makes under his control. There isn't a downside to this event.
I don't know that he could, but without a vote, shareholders could.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
Vanguard is a passive index fund, they track a bunch of indices and sell ETFs of those indices, when a stock that is a component of a given index becomes a bigger portion of that index they have to re-balance to track the change.
If he really wants to change things his best bet is to try for a proxy fight.
Aside from Musk all the other top 5 stock holders are Index fund ETF peddlers.
The big idea is for these funds to be passive and provide a very low cost, very safe way for the general public to invest.
"Don't look for a needle in a haystack, buy the whole haystack"
As the founder of Vanguard "saint" John C. Bogle put it.
However I haven't heard about them being very hands on, and even if some can be persuaded I doubt that BlackRock will play ball, since Larry Fink is the Democratic Party and Big Government's bitch/enabler and a top pusher of DEI/ESG.
Bogle was a staunch conservative and highly patriotic from what I ahve read about thim, but he is sadly deciesed, and I frankly have no idea who runs Vanguard at the moment, and I doubt any of the other index-peddling financial institutions will play ball, especially if the neoliberal swamp leans on them.
Frankly I see index funds as too much of a good thing, they make the tide that lifts all boats all the larger.
Anyway, here is Razorfist's view on the subject:
Sergeant Foley
Well-known member
Any chance Musk buys Twitter or comes close?
A low chance in my eyes I won't bet money on it if that is what your asking.
Musk's feud with facebook has always been the stuff internet legends are made of it wouldn't surprise me if he bought the company using billions just so he can hold his hands over Zuckerberg's job.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
No, he doesn't even have the money to actually do it, he will have to liquidate massive amounts of Tesla stock for starters, for something that makes zero money.
Even getting the other shareholders to give him the chairmanship is highly unlikely.
It being a bunch of index funds makes the purchase make a lot of sense then. That's good news for Musk.
No, he definitely can. He already did a massive liquidation earlier this year of stock which gave him billions in liquidity. Then there are a lot of ways he can go about a purchase of stock in ways that don't immediately hit him in the tax code.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
Why?
Best case they do not interfere, IMO.
Liquidating tens of billions of tesla stock will lower its price, which is already massively overvalued to begin with.
It will also drive Twitter stock up.
bintananth
behind a desk
Not interfering would mean they don't vote their shares.
Index fund means "here's what we buy". It does not mean "we don't vote our shares".
No, best case they vote for a sale, worst case they don't interfere. They aren't activist investors, they just invested for the money. So a sudden buy means either a) they bought for a quick payoff, which is pro-Elon, or B, they just think the stock price will rise regardless.
The liquidation already happened last year:
Elon Musk unloaded $22 billion of Tesla stock — and still owns more now than a year ago
Elon Musk currently owns 172.6 million shares, which gives him a 17% stake in the company, making him far and away the single largest individual shareholder.
www.cnbc.com
As for the purchase, he could get sued massively if someone shows it was a fake offer, and he already paid a big company (forget which one, but famous financial name like Goldman Sachs) to work on the purchase, which is just millions down the drain for no reason if not.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
The whole idea is that they are passive, buy and hold entities who just follow a benchmark index and buy x amount of the given stock index when they get x money.
The whole idea behind index funds is that they are buy and hold and that they are guided by what is in the tracked index, the fund just acts as a pool, basically.
They will not sell part of their holdings even if the price goes through the roof, that would be active management.
If anything, they might have to buy more.
He has, what ~9%?The liquidation already happened last year:
He netted probably about $14B in liquidity, if we toss off about a $2B for tax (might be low, I took slightly above 10% cause I think it was mostly capital gains tax).Elon Musk unloaded $22 billion of Tesla stock — and still owns more now than a year ago
Elon Musk currently owns 172.6 million shares, which gives him a 17% stake in the company, making him far and away the single largest individual shareholder.
As for the purchase, he could get sued massively if someone shows it was a fake offer, and he already paid a big company (forget which one, but famous financial name like Goldman Sachs) to work on the purchase, which is just millions down the drain for no reason if not.
He would probably need at least 16 billion IIRC to buy the remaining 42% he'd need to get the controlling stake, and if he starts buying up stock that will drive the price up.
Frankly, the entirety of Twitter probably isn't worth 6, this is a company that has been losing money systematically.
Tesla at lest makes some cash by selling carbon credits and overpriced electric hypstermobiles.
If he was so concerned about freedom of speech in the USA then for this much money he could have built a new, better twitter from the ground up and used a few billion as well as his personality for advertising and as a way to drag in celebrities to increase the user base fast.(I propose he call it Mutter.)
TBH this smells like a crazy pump and dump, or he is just trying to crash the stock, make the board look like bigger fools and force a lot of the individual investors to shake things up in the company.
I didn't say they would sell, but instead that they would vote for a sale to Elon. This isn't actually buying or selling, and passive investors do actually vote for good or for ill. Here's a paper complaining about it, for example:
After the vote passes, they would then be obligated by the vote to sell to Elon.
There are ways to finance a purchase that don't require a large amount of money up-front. One example is taking a loan to purchase the company with his stock in the company as collateral, and paying it off via income from owning the company. There are plenty of other ways to do this as well when one is as rich as Elon.
He might view twitter as being more valuable as a platform for speech rather than as an investment and so is interested in buying it out of principle. It's not like he's short of money and investing into twitter is a huge risk for him.
A bunch of other people have already tried that and failed. It's the same problem as with FB, youtube, etc. Any competing service can easily replicate features and capabilities, but the part you can't just code into it is the userbase, you need lots of people to switch to the new thing to get it off the ground. And most people don't have any reason to switch, twitter's various issues, while severe, are invisible to the overwhelming number of regular users. Those people won't switch unless they're forced to, because everyone else already uses twitter.
I don't the SEC is so easily fooled, nor is Musk dump enough to get caught that easily.
Agent23
Ни шагу назад!
So something akin to an LBO?
Those were powered by junk bonds, and they usually targeted actually profitable companies.
Meanwhile, Twitter is a black hole that just eats money.
And at a time when interest rates are sure to go up and when a historically massively overpriced stockmarket is bound to undergo a correction?
Sorry, but I doubt it will work.
Your SEC has stood by while far dumber shit has been pulled, IMHO.
Like ENRON, the dot com bubble, the housing bubble as well as Elon's little crypto pump and dumps and his claims that he would take Tesla private.
Enron was fraud, which the SEC did eventually catch them for. Speculative bubbles are not the SEC's problem or something they have tools to fight, and Elon was warned about his posting for crypto.
That's an option, but Elon has a lot of other options, being rich and such. Getting liquidity is expensive, but very doable for him. The LBO example was just an example of how a purchase could be done with little liquidity, not the only example.
Also, he's said he's willing to keep as many minority shareholders as he can, which should lessen the hit as well. He'll probably end up owning like 70%, making it even cheaper.