Honestly I think other people trying to read this situation in some way that ignores a multi billion dollar incentive just sitting there is utterly naive.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
It also does not make sense to do this kind of fraud, as Tesla stock will surely tank on the news of it being used as a collateral in an acquisition deal.
Elon Musk announcing some M&A news with the intent of effecting price changes in TWTR,TSLA securies would be pretty boring, vanilla securities fraud.
And that seems to be what the concern boils down to? The issue of whether he defrauded twitter is a separate thing. (Though I'm inclined to say no, because twitter came at this in a very skeptical and careful way, and normal fraud requires fooling someone into material loss.)
The $1B penalty for backing out of the Twitter deal is the least of Musk's concerns.
The fact that it’s trading lower means that investors don’t expect the deal to go through. And who exactly as been doing his best to very publicly bring the deal into question? Elon Musk.
Why does that matter? Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion. If he comes through, that's the value of Twitter. If he doesn't, then the value is something else. The difference between $44 billion and fair market value is just the expectation of investors that Musk really will pay. So yeah the drop really _is_ due to Musk trying to back out of the deal. If Musk weren't backing out of the deal, then then Twitter's value shouldn't drop regardless of the fact that the rest of the market has.
In other words, US law judges by intent vs actual action/damage.
One example of this is: Credit Card Fraud is prosecuted based on max possible theft vs money stolen.
US law doesn't "judge by intent". If you try to murder someone but you don't succeed, you don't get charged with murder.
To keep with the murder example, intent is what separates 3v2, in most states. Yes, a crime was committed but was the intent to cause bodily harm vs actions causing bodily harm, without intent.
If he entered into that contract with no intent to honor it...
He didn’t waive his right. He just opted not to do any before buying.
I'm sure he'll be able to weasel his way out of this. He'll spend a crap ton of money to lawyers just to be able to say he doesn't have to pay for it, but he's still paying for it on a smaller scale and not in public. Anything to put up another W on the scoresheet.
Removing musk account, if they do thAt, might backfire spectacularly.
- Stabbed man
From my understanding, the current choice is:
1. Does Elon get sued by Twitter to force sale, per the initial agreement, where Elon agreed to allowing Twitter to force a sale.
2. Does Elon just pay the billion separation clause and walk away.
Do you see it differently?
Is there a different version of the doc than listed above? I couldn’t find any revisions and it sure seems that there are options available to Musk.
In all other cases, Elon has committed to give them $44B in exchange for the company.
There’s quite a bit about separation, sections 7 & 8
Ever since what "the definition of 'is' is", my whole outlook on lawyers was just obliterated.
> Ever since what "the definition of 'is' is", my whole outlook on lawyers was just obliterated.
Is that in reference to something? Got a link or an article or something?
Very much yes[0]. It was one of the defensive lines from Bill Clinton. I was still in high school during this, and it set me on a very bad path of thinking how to twist anything and everything anyone ever said. After all, if the pres can do it, then we should all be able to do it.
[0] https://slate.com/news-and-politics/1998/09/bill-clinton-and...
If true, I don't think it's the case he did it intending to pull out. Seems unlikely he would have signed the billion dollar exit clause when he could have easily dragged the initial talks on a bit longer for largely the same result before 'changing his mind'.
My best guess is the offer was genuine (thought impulsive) but as he's seen the price drop further, now his offer seems too much. Why pay $44bn for a sub $30bn company. Kinda simple but seem most likely than all these more complex theories.
But anyway, yes I believe it is possible to be impulsive followed by more logical decision making. This process seems fairly commonplace in the world I observe.
"If true, I don't think it's the case he did it intending to pull out. Seems unlikely he would have ...... My best guess is the offer was genuine (thought impulsive) but as he's seen the price drop further, now his offer seems.. "
Considering his impulsive behavior, which has prior occurrences. 1. Making an immature derogatory remark to one of the people trying to assist with that cave rescue. 2. His statement that he was taking tesla private that he retracted later 3. This situation..
Why do you think he's acting logically now? Why is it your best guess? Your words
1) As said, its not uncommon to act impulsively, followed by more logical decision making after. From your examples, I dont feel listing a few impulsive cases removes his ability to act logically. And the sequence I've guessed seems the most likely in my kindly eyes.
2) Because its not my second best guess, or any other.
3) See 1) & 2)
That said the risk is huge as the world can move on quickly as we saw with MySpace. And Elon s becoming increasingly a political risk factor himself in a business were peoples view on the leaders/owners really matters.
His views really don't matter. Nothing happened to Facebook and nothing will. People will just continue fighting (tweeting).
But really who knows. Maybe he realised he had too much on his plate, or any number of things.
The move would have to be perceived as financially irrational for it to be operable in terms of distracting the market from the diversification.
This is just one of the impacts of the high potency products at the local cannabis dispensary. You can't function if you wake and bake on that shit.
He doesn't hide he would like to have the company private. Owning more stocks moves him closer to this ideal.
Just speculating, I have no inside info on what he really wants to do with the cash.
If he exited TSLA to the tune of the remaining $10B or $15B, staving off a 50% decline in that value then he came out way ahead.
It seems very likely to me he will find a way out of the $1B fee and end up settling for some fraction.
Of course if he just borrowed against his TSLA to facilitate this deal, as I have read he did, then his profit on the move depends on the terms of the loan.
If this really were part of some grand master plan, I think he would have left himself an easier out.
Agree that there will be a massive legal fight, but my guess is that it will be over how much extra Musk has to pay to get out of the deal (beyond the $1B breakup fee), than over making him perform. But who knows; only time will tell.
I'd sued and settle for a few billion instead of taking the one billion backout
He uses his wealth as a weapon against companies he doesn't like, just the mere threat he may get involved causes massive changes in the stock price and in turn causes investors to suffer financial lose.
Reminds me of Bitcoin "whales". It's a shame that this guy is the figure that will take humanity to Mars.
That's just more BS from him. He'll just keep kicking the can, resuming the project with some spectacular stunt every time he needs it. Everything Musk does or says is just a performance to manipulate the markets.
A permanent colony seems like the sort of thing he'd get bored with, though.
Solving the technology problem is just the tip of the iceberg.
Agreed, but enabling folks to get there makes it possible.
Musk doesn't have to build the colony to have made it possible, and it seems to be the thing his attention is genuinely invested in.
It doesn't. Getting a few people to Mars alive does not a colony make. And even that sentence is misleading because while getting to Mars orbit is certainly challenging but that's something I can see humanity capable of overcoming with current technology. Although we never kept humans in space for 2-3 years before which is just the travel there so we don't really have any idea what will happen to them but let's pretend.
Landing very fragile humans on Mars, however, is a much, much formidable challenge. The heaviest object we have managed to soft land on Mars, so far, is the 1025kg Perseverance rover. The Apollo Lunar Module carried two people and was 4280kg dry weight. Of course, you don't need to ascend -- getting those people back to Earth is not even considered by anyone sane -- but still, it shows there's a problem here. And that was two people. And you need everything for them to live on the surface, including air and water and that's even more weight that you can't just slam those into surface at the ~20 000 km/h the spacecraft will approach either.
It would be just about infinitely better if he tried to show off with climate change combat projects. If you want to show off, a vast forest would be much better, much easier to achieve and so much cheaper. He could build storage for renewable energy, these are also sufficiently massive to be good for showing off. And so forth. There are easy but significant things one such as him could do. For a more formidable challenge, elevate the Brazilian people so they don't need to burn the Amazon.
We already have a terraformed planet but the climate is changing in a way which is incompatible with the way humanity currently exists. It would be prudent to change both -- while the change is inevitable it could be slowed and humanity could change too. Once we bought time, we can wait until material and other sciences make space elevators possible and then we can send robots to Mars to build a space elevator too and then we can begin to think about colonizing Mars.
You start talking about being able to build propellant depots in Earth orbit, build Aldrin cyclers, send large amounts of supplies (or even a whole station on the slow, efficient route) in advance to Mars, etc.
Recent rover landings happened at what, < 1 M/S ? which is well within the capacity of the human body.
Considering that Mars atmosphere is substantially thinner, and gravity there much weaker, landing there would be different from Earth anyways.
We are not currently employing any of the more cost efficient methods of getting things to orbit in the first place, for large scale missions of epic size, nor are we currently employing the most efficient propulsion types.
The way I see it, the biggest problem is not one actually being discussed which are the longterm effects on the human body of living on a planet without a protective atmosphere, and protective magnetic field [2]. If getting mass to space becomes less of a financial constraint due to more efficient launch mechanisms, then, shielding would much less of an issue because mass in space would be cheaper [3]
I think that much of these problems come down to the huge capital cost, and unsolved problems around low cost launches; the novel technologies that need to be developed & turned into a new space launch system, and no, i am not talking about traditional rockets.
[1] https://engineering.stanford.edu/magazine/article/safe-landi...
[2] https://www.nuclear-power.com/nuclear-engineering/radiation-...
[3] https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/how-nasa-protects-...
If need be, large countries that have the technology like China, Russia, US could do it. But it would still require gigantic amounts of capital allocation and effort at this stage. So no one will do it. The biggest thing that is happening right now is China and Russia signing an agreement to build a base on the moon. (yes)
Bezos has the right idea, leaning into O'Neil cylinders.
"???"
Keyword: regolith
Mars is at least 10x harder. The path to space settlement is in our own backyard.
Not humanity. Only selected ones.
Likely is putting it quite mildly - it's likely to cause a premature death in the same way that throwing yourself off the empire state building is likely to cause some injury.
A mars trip itself is only for those going. Most people don't get a part of it unlike pizza which can be divided
We’d all agree that Europeans (non-exclusively) colonized the Americas, but not all Europeans went and not all had the opportunity.
That's my issue
It's like if you sell your car to a dangerous driver: you have no financial stake in whether they go on to crash it.
Uh, yes?
The shareholders, and the board as their agents, care about the company as a means to an end: and that end is making money. They’ve already concluded the sale achieves that goal.
If Musk wants to burn the company to the ground after they cash out, they don't care.
Heck, some of them may invest in competitors after the sale banking on that to make even more money.
The notion that the board is all of a sudden worried about what Musk might do with Twitter is about as silly as Musk thinking he can weasel his way out of a binding contract he already signed.
Almost everyone votes their economic interest.
Some people switched to culture/values voting (ie, telling other people what to do), some people just enjoy winning and so vote for whoever they think is going to win.
If you watch an amateur chess game you’ll find that most players actually have some master plan, but don’t have the skills to see the flaws, or even if the plan is perfect, they don’t have the skills to play it through either.
My sniff test for any conspiracy theory actually involves incompetence. The more competent the plan and execution need to be, the less likely it is to be a conspiracy.
The fact that his supposed plan here has some flaws is not _further_ evidence that it was planned from the beginning, that's absurd.
It seems much more likely that buying Twitter was just an impulsive decision for him that he is now regretting and looking for a way out of.
I agree with you that many supposed conspiracies require too much competence in order to pull off, and can usually be dismissed as impossible to achieve in practice. But it doesn't follow that, as a consequence, any action that would be incompetent as part of a conspiracy should be considered evidence that a conspiracy exists.
You only need to be competent enough to realize how markets can be manipulated to initiate a conspiracy, however successfully executing one requires a whole new master level of skill set. Off course the people with such skill set exist (as evidenced by the numerous market manipulation schemes successfully executed in today’s business world) and if Musk was smart he would hire such an expert to scheme it for him.
What we might be witnessing here is a business person that is smart enough to realize that market can be manipulated, and see a position to where they can execute such a manipulation, but not competent enough to execute a non-trivial plan without flaws. And worse not smart enough to hire a person with the correct skill set to do it for him.
That’s a great point. Thank you :)
Of course, there are simpler examples, like John Titor, or Pierre de Fermat’s last theorem proof that he would have done all in his head.
On the other hand many things went wrong in the actual moon landing. There were liftoffs that failed, experiments that went nowhere, targets that were missed, and even people that died. The actual moon landing was a hard task they succeeded at while making a ton of mistakes in the process, just like humans do in the real world when we are at our best.
That seems pretty different from, "If your entire plan is to back out of a contract, add a clause to the contract that lets you back out of it."
The conspiracy theory that Musk is using this twitter scheme to manipulate the markets in his favor does not fail any sniff tests that I’m aware of.
The amount of competence required to prepare a controlled demolition of a 110 storey trade center which is occupied 24/7 and full of cameras without anyone noticing and associating this prep work with the much publicised plane crashes that happened afterwards would be staggering, even before considering the insanity of such a scheme.
At the risk of opening a can of worms, the best evidence against the considerably more plausible "lab-leak" COVID theory is that manufacturing an alternative chain of evidence that convinces most unconnected foreign experts of an alternative theory (which still points at Wuhan and Chinese market regulations) when they have plenty of reason to find fault with it requires a lot of competence, as well as totally the opposite approach to China's usual way of suppressing stories.
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000110465922...
Is Twitter going to spend the next few years litigating this just to force someone to buy the company that doesn't want to? Elon's team can drag this on and on.
What will happen to the value of Twitter's stock in the meantime? What will happen to the value of working at Twitter? It'll become a zombie company.
The only option for Twitter to continue existing is to sue Musk for the amount he promised.
Stock price = "stock price without Elon owning it" + "Elons premium" * "likelihood of Elon losing the lawsuit and being forced to buy the company"
That likelihood should never be less than 0, so I think this legal fight would only help the twitter stock price.
I guess I am assuming that the "true price" is actually lower than what Elon offered for it.
It’s not like he came up with the “they’re all bots” theory after committing.
The karma hit at-fates-hands takes because people are irrational is collateral damage.
Have an upvote.
Parroting the statements of his legal team without adding the context around those statements is going to garner downvotes.
What actually happened isn't relevant. What is relevant is whether he may have thought it would work better. Tricky to prove.
This is all publicly available. Due to leverage, he faced ruin if Tesla fell below X (whatever X is) if he funded it all himself. So he opened his side of the deal up to other people, and allowed other large shareholders to come inside his tent - which reduced his exposure. Then the market dropped 15%.
Matt Levine has an excellent series of newsletters covering it.
There's no way he didn't foresee this.
It would be shocking if he is lacking in self-awareness to that extent.
'Ol Musky missing self-awareness? Surely, you jest Mr. Spock!
Just remember the launch of Tesla auto-pilot, where he was promising full self driving within a year or two, so good that you would let your car work as a taxi while you don't need it and it would become a passive stream of income so great you would see your investment back in around a year! He actually said "our goal is to make Ilit financially irresponsible to buy any other car". This is not a man who "manages hype".
https://twitter.com/wolfejosh/status/19430106783023104
He's called Tesla a "fraud" and that it would collapse many, many times while it's just kept going up and up and up over the last decade. For example:
Is it Josh's fault that the market has listened to Musk when he's said, every year since 2016, that FSD is "coming, this year, for real"?
Couldn't he just have said "SpaceX needs more cash" or something like that?
Regardless, the fall in share price likely drove the outcome.
It blows my mind how much (non Tesla) car companies spend just on advertising.
People here don't know what claims in entirety were made by either party, and thus, it's impossible to speculate. This is what courts are for and Elon, and his team, are not idiots.
All we know are the facts, he agreed to buy twitter and now he is trying to walk away from the deal.
There could be multiple reasons for that, including what he is saying on face value or a dozen other scenarios.
He could still be wanting to buy twitter and use this as a bargaining tool to lower the price.
You can say he was right, once we know the full facts which will be once this plays out and since it doesn't really affect any of us, speculating right now is simply taking part in silly gossip.
Like, you can sign up for free. What's gonna prevent fake accounts in that case?
In my mind this is an insane conspiracy theory that fails occam razor, he was high and said we wanted to buy Twitter. People made fun of him so he dug in to prove all those stupid people. There is no complex deal needed here.
Not that complicated really.
That's what you do when you sober up and realize what a mess you've made.
I am sure the offer price of $54.20 was a joke. With Musk, the appearance of those digits is never an accident.
Twitter can leverage a huge amount of data about personal preferences, interests, relationship status, political leanings, income, usage profiles, message habits and content, social graph, and location.
If you specifically wanted to clamp down on certain demographics, it would be an excellent way to locate them.
I don't believe for a second that Elon Musk really cares about free speech for anyone but himself and he is right now probably not limited by twitter's policy but by other externalities
In any case, does twitter not already have a lot of "assholes" and people with "violent ideas"?
My point being that I don't trust Elon Musk to make better moderation decisions than whoever is in charge right now.
Past attempts of social media with low barriers of what is allowed have absolutely turned out worse than Twitter if you ask me(e.g. 4chan, 8chan, gab etc) That's why I think the best case is "Twitter but more aligned with whatever Elon Musk thinks at the moment"
I'm just saying what if... gasp... he simply did something foolish? The blame-it-on-the-bipolar out reinforces the narrative of an infallible person who only make mistakes because of a medical condition. Take that line of thinking one step further and you are now fully onboard the bipolar stigma train.
He spent days/weeks/months on setting up this deal, he became obsessed with it at some point.
(Hopefully) no one is "blaming" it on the bipolar. It's simply something consistent with bipolar. (But it's also consistent with rich people getting obsessed with something and then spending way too much resources on it.)
> reinforces the narrative
That narrative is simply bad and pushed by people who have no idea what they are talking about. Musk's previous instances of risk taking (that "all" turned out to be fine) is also perfectly consistent with bipolar. (Of course if you look at it then it turns out that he took many risks that made very little sense, like when he talked about taking Tesla private, the infamous funding secured tweet.)
And of course just a label like bipolar means (almost) nothing, these spectrum disorders are complex (and there are usually other comorbidities at the same time, just with different severity), we don't know how he is treating/medicating/managing it, or is it even the right diagnosis or not. Or he could have simply lied.
It's also consistent with making a mistake.
and of course we all hear about the top of the Forbes billionaire list mistakes, the wework scandal and the other questionable decisions of Masayoshi Son, how "the crazier someone it's more likely they get money from Thiel", etc.
but even on top of all these this one easily takes the cake.
yes, in isolation it's a "mistake", but luckily we have plenty of context for it.
So then you agree that it being a mistake is entirely plausible and that it having anything to do with being bipolar is pure speculation?
It's a very costly and stubborn mistake either way and he has (or hasn't) bipolar either way.
Even in the most severe substance dependence cases some people can override their short term wants (eg. they don't go and mug people to get money for their next fix), while there's a clear pattern of this behavior in others. (But it's what we expect, since we define one by the other.) So in both of those instances, it was their mental state, but was it the altered part or the underlying base state that let the dependence to form in the first part? It's really not separable.
One explains the other, but there's no direction, no proximate causal relationship. At best there is some predictive power, ie. if someone goes off their meds, or stressors increase they will show behavior consistent with this or that. (But in general everyone will make more mistakes when they have more stress in their life. Who would have guessed, I know.)
Yet these categories (diagnoses) are not useless. They communicate behavior patterns, things to look for, things to be mindful of and try to manage.
That’s smart.
If it is a scheme and he had no intention of ever actually buying twitter, the government would still have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he did it for this fraudulent reason. Or at least collect enough evidence to make him accept a plea deal for fear he could lose in court.
It would seem to me that him backing out now has a bunch of other very plausible explanations beyond "it was fraud all along", including the one this document states, that twitter breached their agreement by not providing the data he wanted to assess the prevalence of fake account himself. Or even that buying some "media company" is just what billionaires do[1], but him being "eccentric" he went in too hard and fast and is now backing out that he has seen the backslash and/or has done some actual due diligence, which would make him stupid and/or irresponsible but not criminal. All that to me seems like good ways for lawyers to claim there is "reasonable doubt" should he ever get charged with fraud, unless the government would happen to find some "smoking gun" piece of evidence.
And of course it assumes there is actually political will to nail him.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/billionaires-who-bought-publish...
The man literally tweeted “Tesla stock is too high right now, imo” and nothing happened.
Musk not being reigned in by the SEC, when looked at in a vacuum is probably not the end of the world or the US economy, but it’s not in a vacuum. Everyone watching right now realizes that you can publicly enter into fraudulent business deals that you leave at convenience and there is nothing you can do about it unless you have have better lawyers. That is gonna be super degrading towards the ease of doing business
[0] you didn't think Starlink's purpose is to let fisherman watch YouTube did you?
</tinfoil>
According to this hypothesis, he would still walk out with 7.5B in hard cash instead of 8.5B in Tesla share. I'm not in his boots, but I see how it can be seen as worth it.
A Joe Boggs acting in this fgashion would have been taken to the cleaners long ago.
The more it goes on it feels like “I don't like how twitter works, I’ll show them! <insert some less developed ideas of free speech on the internet>”
Later:
“Oh noes if I do what I want here the result might be bad…”
It just feels like a YOLO business deal that wasn’t thought out the more this goes on.
is this just 100% unthinkable?
Then, when you conclude a definitive agreement without any provision for an "out" based on an issue that you've already acknowledged knowing about (and hoping to fix post-acq)-- you're kinda stuck with it.
I think the big issue is that with the movement in equities, it requires him to overpay for Twitter with Tesla stock that is much less valuable. Financing the deal got much harder for him.
Fake followers and accounts and twitter’s battle with them is well known. Are we thinking he had no clue until after he signed on the dotted line?
And prove that’s enough of a reason to end the deal?
The best hypothesis I've heard is that he was trying to secure the raw materials that Tesla's stock price is made out of.
Twitter is influential to the concerns of Musk's competitors and potential regulators who might stand in his way.
Regardless of its deflated value, (all assets were way puffed up) Twitter is still extremely valuable.
Arguably, it is still positioned to be worth more than Facebook.
He sent his selfie in a tweet response to Parag’s tweet explanation.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/2022/05/16/twitter-b...
edit: dont know why this had to be flagged. I guess some people really take personal offense in that elon musk might be correct in his thoughts about twitter daily bot %
When you can afford the best legal team money can buy and payoff the rest of the gatekeepers, then the game is simply to transfer wealth into your own pocket in bigger chunks.
The normal remedy for breach of contract is for the breaching party to have to pay the other party monetary damages sufficient to put the other party in the monetary position they would have been in had the contract not been breached. Court generally will only order someone to actually go through with the contract (which is called specific performance) if monetary damages won't work for some reason.
For example if we have a contract for me to sell you a million microcontrollers at $1 each, which you are going to use to make a million units of some gadget that you are going to sell for a profit of $0.10 each, and I find someone who will give me $2 each for the microcontrollers and so let you know I'm going to breach the contract and sell my microcontrollers to them, a court is very unlikely to order me to honor the contract. They will order me to pay you $100k, the profit you were anticipating making from our deal (and probably attorney fees, and other costs you'd incur dealing with the breach).
But, according to this blog [1] at Findlaw:
> If Musk tries to abandon the deal, Twitter could sue him and ask for specific performance. This remedy is usually hard to get, but Musk agreed to a powerful specific performance clause in the merger agreement. In fact, he didn't just agree that Twitter could get specific performance. He promised that he wouldn't argue it couldn't (forgive the double-negative).
I'm unable to think of any good reason one would agree to that.
[1] https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/courtside/is-elon-musk-go...
This will just slowly fade from memory as the lawyers argue and at some point they’ll settle.
Twitter shareholders do. If I hold $1m in TWTR today, this deal going through is worth around 500K to me, possibly more if we assume the share value now prices in the buyout potential and will drop otherwise.
I don’t think most American judges are susceptible to any kind of bribery (other than jurisdictions where elected judges may expect campaign donations from litigants), but Delaware has to be among the absolute least likely to have that issue.
Isn't that like more than half of his MO?
Most folks who subscribe to the "Musk Principles" aren't nearly as lucky and go bust much earlier.
Perhaps he didn't expect the Nasdaq composite to drop 2000 over the next several months? That could have been careless, depending on the sort of agreement he signed. I guess he can afford a $1B penalty, but good luck finding another buyer after that. It's not as though Twitter are overflowing with ideas for profit...
The $1B is if there's some outside reason why the deal cannot get done, e.g. because of regulatory concerns.
It's not a "pay a $1B break-up fee at your discretion to get out of the deal" clause.
> Accordingly, the parties hereto acknowledge and agree that the parties hereto shall be entitled to an injunction, specific performance and other equitable relief to prevent breaches of this Agreement and to enforce specifically the terms and provisions hereof, in addition to any other remedy to which they are entitled at law or in equity. Each of the parties hereto agrees that it will not oppose the granting of an injunction, specific performance and other equitable relief on the basis that any other party has an adequate remedy at law or that any award of specific performance is not an appropriate remedy for any reason at law or in equity.
...
> (b) Notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, including the availability of the Parent Termination Fee or other monetary damages, remedy or award, it is hereby acknowledged and agreed that the Company shall be entitled to specific performance or other equitable remedy to enforce Parent and Acquisition Sub’s obligations to cause the Equity Investor to fund the Equity Financing, or to enforce the Equity Investor’s obligation to fund the Equity Financing directly, and to consummate the Closing ....
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/jack-dorsey-elon-musk-is-the...
This most of all makes me think he was really into it and then fucked it all up. Or Jack was just trying to get back at the board.
by that you mean straight up lying, attempting fraud etc...
This isn’t like buying a house…
Why not both? Arrogance tends to lead to carelessness.
the real reason he's filing the sec notice is the gas has run out of the bullshit bus. nobody believes his due diligence claims, the board just sent him a resounding vote of approval to buy, and the legal pain train of that comes with anymore of this childish foot dragging sideshow is pulling into the station.
I'd be stunned if he gets to walk off with the billion dollar penalty. too many financial guarantees and backings have been made, and musks had an SEC crosshair on him for years now. they know exactly what patent brand of bullshit he's peddling and have shown themselves more than willing in the past to take action.
musk can file all the notices he wants but i suspect hes about to get ready for the billionaires version of a shotgun wedding.
Have as many kids as possible since it’s obvious he will own the solar system. He ain’t gonna be that democratic therefore. Just another dynasty but maybe the last
He doesn't run any of his firms with direct democracy, why on earth would he run his Martian kingdom as one?
Real progress takes real work, not promises and marketing fluff. If humanity makes it to Mars it will likely be without his help.
I've never seen a Waymo, Cruise, Rivian or a Ford 150 Lightning in my entire life and I've been in many major cities across the world. You know what I do see on a daily basis though? Teslas.
i spat out my drink reading this
Answer: some sort of stock manipulation whether it be Tesla's or Twitter's
It has continually been one of the most underperforming platforms of it's size. Head of Data Science resigning doesn't bode well during a deal hinging on the accuracy of the data.
- cold feet - impetous - eccentric - breathlessly arrogant - astonishingly careless
pupils
He may have been honest and correct about that, but later realized that he simply does not have the time to be CEO of yet another large company.
Well history is not yet written. They could be taught as negative examples
Who in their right mind would spend billions of dollars without being allowed to "look at the books" regarding the spam account ratio?
I don't think it was impetuous. I think he did this all on purpose and planned on using his usual tactics of improvisational manipulation and grandstanding to get what he wanted, whether it was Twitter at a cheap price, manipulating the Twitter stock price to make a quick buck off of his stock purchase, liquidate some of his Tesla stock, seed further discontent on Twitter, spur on rabble around bots (despite knowing full well that Tesla and himself have benefited from Twitter bots and potentially even controlled them), drone on about free speech in some sort of libertarian political play, or whatever else. And it has all failed. Now, he's just gonna let his dirty lawyers figure some way out of it all and move on to the next scam.
Then there was BTC to purchase Tesla cars, then there was Doge. The point being I think these types of things indicate Musk, like a lot of smart people can be really, really dumb sometimes. Also a bit Hanlons Razor.
Then again, it seems the main "win" he often has in mind is just getting attention, so maybe his need for attention exceeds even what I thought.
However I suspect the lawsuit to be settled rather than drag on for years. Probably he'll buy it at a reduced price or pay a larger termination fee to walk away.
You have to look at it from the angle of Musk being a troll and a right wing figure. He wanted to impress his right wing followers by making Twitter a more free and open place for all kinds of speech (even hate, violence, etc). Maybe he realized this was a bad idea and managing Twitter is more a job for a grown up than a troll, so he looked for a way out.
Being called Eccentric is the luxury of the rich. If he was poor one will say "irresponsible" or even "crazy".
It is not the responsibility of a corporation to keep you fed or alive.
If you don't like how a job treats you find another one.
This pseudo familial relationship with jobs that Americans seem to have is one of the oddest mental illnesses I've seen.
honestly, you think this is a mental illness?
and i think there are many reasonable arguments that huge chunks of the world care far more about their jobs impact on their lives than we (u.s. americans) do.
a mental illness? the way you say everything in your comment, as if that belief is somehow a universal truth is wild.
I know some drivers will run red lights and stop signs, so I walk and bike accordingly. I’m still in the right to get mad when a driver narrowly misses me because he’s a self involved clown.
There isn't. Have a nice day.
I have no idea why you would think that is an argument for anything.
Because they ask for that credit, and their defenders give them that credit when you criticize them.
It seems apparent to this observer that the spam accounts thing and other metrics were always super inflated and perhaps now there will be a reckoning.
I also think it is very funny how there was much gnashing of teeth and literal tears at the prospect of him owning twitter but now they might end up chasing him and try to force him to buy them, thus further alienating the woke mob and sowing chaos internally. Look how the turn tables have turn tabled.
If they are greedy enough to go to court over it the question of just how fake this company is will stay in the news for the duration of the trial and the stock will tank. If they don't they might have to, you know, actually function like a real company.
This story is far from over.
He publicly stated that he wanted to buy Twitter to clear up the fake account issue, he knew about the issue before entering the deal, when signing he waived due diligence that could have given him the opportunity to investigate the issue before signing...
Musk's own tweets will work against him if he tries to use the fake accounts issue to back out.
I'm guessing he saw a glimpse of just how extensive the problem really is and the unwillingness of the organization to be remotely honest about it. It would not surprise me if it was 95% bots, rather than 5%.
He's clearly eccentric in his approach to decision making: I don't think any Harvard Business School course will teach "the Musk Principles". But it's unclear to me what he initially thought he was getting out of this. In the original news, he said, "Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it." Either he was breathlessly arrogant or astonishingly careless in the first instance. And I say this as someone who has huge respect for his accomplishments in other industries.