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Elon Musk Makes Cash Offer for Twitter


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Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion in cash

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Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in cash, or about $43 billion, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday.

Why it matters: The move, which Musk called his "best and final offer," comes after the billionaire has repeatedly criticized Twitter, disclosed a 9.2% stake in the social media company and backed out of joining its board of directors.

What they're saying: "As I indicated this weekend, I believe that the company should be private to go through the changes that need to be made," Musk told Twitter, per the filing.

  • "I am not playing the back-and-forth game. I have moved straight to the end. It's a high price and your shareholders will love it," he added.
  • "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."
  • Musk separately tweeted the move out to his 80 million-plus followers, saying: "I made an offer."

Twitter confirmed receiving an "unsolicited" offer from Musk, saying in a statement that its "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."

Pricing: Musk is offering an 18.2% premium to where Twitter shares ended trading on Wednesday, and a 38% premium to where they traded before his ownership stake was disclosed. However, Twitter shares traded above $60 as recently as last October.

  • Musk does not disclose how he plans to pay for Twitter, as the total price would be north of $43 billion.
  • One possibility is that he has investment partners, although he does not say that in his letter. Another is that he plans to leverage his stock in Tesla, whose shares are down slightly in premarket trading on the Twitter news.
  • Musk famously got in trouble with securities regulators for writing that he had "funding secured" to take Tesla private for $420 per share in 2018, when he did not. His offer to buy Twitter also includes the number 420, which can be used as a reference to smoking marijuana.
  • He later settled with the SEC, though he recently tried to back out of that deal.

 

 

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Personally I agree with Trevor Noah/The Daily Show. If you are happy to pay millions more just to get a dope “joke” in for each share, you really, really, REALLY have too much money.

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I think its a pump and dump ploy. He's trying to raise the stock price, so he can dump his shares on the market. And then blame Twitter's board saying they wouldn't accept his offer.

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$44b? No 420 joke? He must be wanting to be taken seriously! 🙄 (unless that was our local currency, I didn’t pay that much attention skim reading)

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Breakingviews: Elon Musk probably won’t buy Twitter

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NEW YORK, April 27 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Four years ago, Elon Musk vowed to set up a peanut brittle company to take on Warren Buffett’s iconic U.S. confectioner See’s Candies. Then he changed his mind. It wouldn't be surprising if Musk's $44 billion deal to buy social network Twitter went the same way.

Sure, the Tesla boss was clearly serious about acquiring Twitter as of recently. The financing from Morgan Stanley is shored up. The agreement includes a fee of $1 billion that he – or Twitter – would have to pay if they renege on the contract. And Twitter’s lawyers even wedged in a so-called “specific performance” clause, which could theoretically force Musk to buy the company if he threatens to back out, though in practice this could probably be settled by adding to the break fee.

There are good reasons for him to get cold feet. The biggest is Tesla. The electric-vehicle maker’s stock has fallen around a fifth since Musk first revealed his stake in Twitter, partly because Musk may sell shares to fund his new adventure. If Tesla’s stock bounces back – likely if the Twitter deal falls away – the $40 billion of recouped wealth would more than make up for the break fee.

China is a major sticking point too. Tesla produces half of its vehicles there, as well as a quarter of its revenue. But Twitter is no friend to the People's Republic, most recently for defying Beijing in its handling of content related to Hong Kong protests. China could easily hold Tesla to ransom if a Musk-owned Twitter didn’t play ball. That’s uncomfortable for a self-professed “free speech absolutist.”

In reality, Musk’s absolutism probably won't survive a Twitter deal anyway. European Union Commissioner Thierry Breton told the Financial Times this week that the company must police illegal or harmful content or risk being banned. In the United States, where regulators are less aggressive, other technology firms could effectively create the same threat. Apple, for example, gets to decide which apps appear in its influential store.

One thing makes it easier for Musk to walk away before any of this becomes a problem: The market partly anticipates it already. Twitter’s stock is currently trading 11% below his offer price – a fairly wide spread for a deal with little antitrust pushback. Musk’s tweets criticizing some company actions – potentially flouting the merger agreement - already suggest he might be starting to lose interest. Most likely, Musk's attention will wander elsewhere. It wouldn't be the first time.

Follow @thereallsl on Twitter

Follow @GinaChon on Twitter

(The authors are Reuters Breakingviews columnists. The opinions expressed are their own.)

CONTEXT NEWS

- Twitter said on April 25 that it had agreed to sell itself to an entity wholly owned by Elon Musk for $54.20 a share in a transaction valued at $44 billion.

- The price represents a 38% premium to where Twitter shares closed on April 1, the last trading day before Musk, the chief executive of electric-vehicle maker Tesla, disclosed his more than 9% stake in the social media company.

 

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FYI, it was reported this morning that he sold 8.4 billion dollars in Tesla stock to raise money for the Twitter deal or at least that's what they believe.

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Well, I checked in on twitter a few minutes ago and my feed has literally turned into a cess pool of reich wing, Biden hating crap when I accidentally chose "top tweets first". 

 

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Elon Musk says he would reverse Twitter's Trump ban

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New York (CNN Business)Elon Musk said Tuesday that he would restore former President Donald Trump's banned account on Twitter if his deal to acquire the company is completed.

Musk's remarks at Financial Times' Future of the Car conference mark his first public acknowledgment of what had been widely expected since the billionaire announced plans to buy the social media giant for $44 billion.

Musk has previously said he thinks Twitter should be more "reluctant to delete things" and "very cautious with permanent bans." On Tuesday, he called Twitter's decision to ban Trump in January 2021 a "mistake."

"I do think it was not correct to ban Donald Trump, I think that was a mistake," Musk said. "I would reverse the perma-ban. ... But my opinion, and Jack Dorsey, I want to be clear, shares this opinion, is that we should not have perma-bans."

Dorsey, Twitter's cofounder and former CEO, tweeted Tuesday following Musk's remarks that he does "agree" there shouldn't be permanent bans on Twitter users. "There are exceptions ... but generally permanent bans are a failure of ours and don't work," he said.

Twitter declined to comment on Musk's remarks.

Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter following the January 6 Capitol Riot for violating the platform's rules against violence incitement, a decision the company has said was headed by Dorsey. Other social platforms followed in banning or suspending Trump's account.

Trump, for his part, has said he would not return to Twitter even if his account were restored, instead promoting his own social media venture, Truth Social, which has so far appeared to struggle to get off the ground.

"Banning Trump from Twitter didn't end Trump's voice, it will amplify it among the right and this is why it's morally wrong and flat out stupid," Musk said at the event on Tuesday.

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO acknowledged that his acquisition of Twitter, and Trump's return, are not yet a done deal. "I will say that I don't own Twitter yet, so this is not a thing that will definitely happen, because what if I don't own Twitter?" he said.

There remain some questions about whether Musk will indeed go through with the deal, or whether the decline in Tesla (TSLA) shares over the past month could negatively impact his ability to finance the deal. Twitter (TWTR) stock was trading around $47.70 on Tuesday afternoon, well below Musk's offer price of $54.20 per share, suggesting some investor skepticism about the likelihood that the deal gets completed.

That hasn't stopped Musk from continuing to expound on his plans for the platform in recent weeks. Musk has said his goal is to bolster free speech on the platform and to make it clearer to users when the platform takes actions that impact what people see on Twitter.

On Tuesday, he reiterated his desire to rid Twitter of bots promoting spam or scams, and his plan to make Twitter's algorithm publicly available for anyone to view and comment on.

"I would literally put the Twitter algorithm on GitHub and say like, 'Hey, anyone want to suggest changes to this? Please go ahead,'" Musk said, adding that he sees such a move as a way to "build transparency and trust."

He also criticized what he views as Twitter's political bias, echoing claims from some prominent figures on the right.

"I think Twitter needs to be much more evenhanded. It currently has a strong left bias because it's based in San Francisco," he said. "I don't think the people there necessarily intend, or at least some of them don't intend, to have a left bias. They just, from their perspective, it seems moderate, but they're just coming after it from an environment that is very far left."

(Twitter has previously said its algorithms and employees do not discriminate against any particular political point of view.)

In addition to reversing the Trump ban, Musk said he would make permanent bans "extremely rare," reserving them for "bots or spam, scam accounts where there's just no legitimacy to the account at all."

Musk also expanded on his vision for Twitter's content moderation. Previously, Musk has said he intends for Twitter to limit its content moderation to that which governments have deemed explicitly illegal — and not to go much further.

But on Tuesday, Musk conceded that there could be a wide range of objectionable content that he would want Twitter to enforce against. In addition to illegal content, Musk identified two other categories of content that could be subject to penalties: speech that is "destructive to the world" and "wrong and bad."

"If they say something that is illegal or otherwise just destructive to the world, then there should be perhaps a timeout, a temporary suspension, or that particular tweet should be made invisible or have very limited traction," Musk said. He added: "I think if there are tweets that are wrong and bad, those should be either deleted or made invisible, and a suspension, a temporary suspension is appropriate but not a permanent ban."

Musk didn't say what metrics Twitter might use to determine if a tweet may be "wrong and bad" or "destructive to the world," and when it might opt for one type of penalty over another.

 

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Oh yes, we’ve all seen what good came of Trump being on Twitter. The "open discourse" and "free speech" sure helped to heal the rifts between Democrats and Republicans, and was most certainly never influenced by Russian bots. Thank God that we have rich people like Elon Musk to right such grievous wrongs as Trump‘s Twitter Ban. 
 

Then again, according to Elon we all live in a simulation and he’s just testing the simulation limits, so what does anything matter anyway? (Nope, I really don’t like that guy.)

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On 5/10/2022 at 4:08 PM, Exchange Atheist said:

Then again, according to Elon we all live in a simulation and he’s just testing the simulation limits, so what does anything matter anyway? (Nope, I really don’t like that guy.)

Much as I like Tesla I really do not like Elon.  He just comes off as a smug, arrogant, sanctimonious asshole.  Yeah, I would still buy a Tesla even though it would mean having to hold my nose.  I'm glad at this point that there are other players in the game now so I have a bit of a choice.

Some Tesla fan boy had gotten in a wreck with his Tesla and came out of it with just few bumps and bruises.  He was posting on Facebook thanking Elon for designing such a safe car.  I clamped by mouth shut and did not say the obvious - it's not Elon who made the car so safe but the engineers and designers working at Tesla who did that.  He did not come up with everything related to the car.   

Getting cold feet, Elon?

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Elon Musk said he is putting his bid to acquire Twitter (TWTR) on hold, weeks after agreeing to take the company private in a $44 billion deal.

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users," Musk tweeted on Friday.

The news initially sent Twitter shares down more than 20% in premarket trading before the stock rebounded somewhat. Two hours after his first tweet, Musk posted that he is "still committed to acquisition."

In his tweet about putting the deal on hold, Musk linked to a May 2 Reuters report about Twitter's most recent disclosure about its spam and fake account problem.

 

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A SpaceX flight attendant said Elon Musk exposed himself and propositioned her for sex, documents show. The company paid $250,000 for her silence.

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SpaceX, the aerospace firm founded by Elon Musk, the world's wealthiest man, paid a flight attendant $250,000 to settle a sexual misconduct claim against Musk in 2018, Insider has learned.

The attendant worked as a member of the cabin crew on a contract basis for SpaceX's corporate jet fleet. She accused Musk of exposing his erect penis to her, rubbing her leg without consent, and offering to buy her a horse in exchange for an erotic massage, according to interviews and documents obtained by Insider.

The incident, which took place in 2016, is alleged in a declaration signed by a friend of the attendant and prepared in support of her claim. The details in this story are drawn from the declaration as well as other documents, including email correspondence and other records shared with Insider by the friend.

According to the declaration, the attendant confided to the friend that after taking the flight attendant job, she was encouraged to get licensed as a masseuse so that she could give Musk massages. It was during one such massage in a private cabin on Musk's Gulfstream G650ER, she told the friend, that Musk propositioned her.

After Insider contacted Musk for comment, he emailed to ask for more time to respond and said there is "a lot more to this story."

"If I were inclined to engage in sexual harassment, this is unlikely to be the first time in my entire 30-year career that it comes to light," he wrote, calling the story a "politically motivated hit piece."

Insider extended the deadline and reiterated the offer to Musk to comment on the claims. He did not respond.

Reached via cell phone, SpaceX vice president of legal Christopher Cardaci said, "I'm not going to comment on any settlement agreements." SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment to its general media contact email address.

An allegation that Musk offered a horse in exchange for an erotic massage

The flight attendant told her friend that the billionaire SpaceX and Tesla founder asked her to come to his room during a flight in late 2016 "for a full body massage," the declaration says. When she arrived, the attendant found that Musk "was completely naked except for a sheet covering the lower half of his body." During the massage, the declaration says, Musk "exposed his genitals" and then "touched her and offered to buy her a horse if she would 'do more,' referring to the performance of sex acts." 

The attendant, who rides horses, declined and continued with the massage without engaging in any sexual conduct. The attendant "is not for sale," the friend's declaration said. "She is not going to perform sexual favors for money or gifts." The incident occurred during a flight to London.

In an interview with Insider, the friend described the attendant's allegations in more detail. She spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing fears for her personal safety, but Insider is aware of her identity. Insider is also aware of the flight attendant's identity, but is not naming her because she has claimed to be a victim of sexual misconduct. She declined to comment for this story.

"He whipped out his penis, it was erect," the friend said, describing the allegations. "And he started propositioning her, like he touched her thigh and told her he would buy her a horse. And he basically tried to bribe her to perform some sort of sexual favor."

"Punished for refusing to prostitute herself"

The friend said that the attendant told her about the misconduct while they were on a hike together shortly after the London trip. The friend described the attendant as distraught and visibly shaken. "She was really upset," the friend said. "She didn't know what to do."

The flight attendant told her friend that work began to dry up after she refused Musk's advances. "Before the incident, she regarded Mr. Musk as a person to look up to," the declaration says. "But after he exposed himself, touched her without permission, and offered to pay her for sex, she was full of anxiety." 

"She figured things could just go back to normal and she would pretend like nothing happened," the friend told Insider. "However, she started to feel as if she was receiving some sort of retaliation where her shifts were cut back, and she was starting to feel really stressed."

Eventually, the declaration says, the attendant felt "she was being pushed out and punished for refusing to prostitute herself."

 

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Now Elon has a sad cause people are mean to him. 

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Elon Musk got defensive on Thursday evening after a meme suggested he may be spending a little too much time on Twitter and not enough time on his electric vehicle company.

“To be clear, I’m spending <5% (but actually) of my time on the Twitter acquisition. It ain’t rocket science!” the Tesla CEO exclaimed in a tweet, attached with a photo of the meme.

The meme shows a woman walking past a couple, distracting the boyfriend and annoying the man’s girlfriend. The woman walking past was Twitter, the disapproving other woman was Tesla, and the distracted man was of course Elon Musk.

It’s this one. I’m not giving that attention you know what any links to his twitter account. 

Spoiler

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<sarcasm>Poor Elon</sarcasm> - he's now being called the new Mike Lindell after a meltdown;

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After learning that Tesla being knocked off the S&P 100 ESG list for a litany of violations, Elon Musk had a total meltdown on Twitter, the social media platform he apparently no longer wants to buy, but may be forced to purchase anyway. During his weird, conspiratorial rant, Musk claimed that he’s the target of “political attacks” before vowing to never vote for the Democratic Party ever again.

The index provider also cited concerns related to working conditions and the firm’s handling of an investigation into deaths and injuries linked to its driver-assistance systems. A lack of low-carbon strategy and codes of business conduct also counted against Elon Musk’s company, it said.

Of course, none of those reasons were mentioned during Musk’s meltdown. Instead, he railed against the “leftist agenda” and essentially accused the ESG of being “woke.” It was enough of a wild tangent, that Mike Lindell started trending as Musk was compared to the maniacal MyPillow CEO, who also has a penchant for going on wild rants about leftist forces conspiring against him and his best pal Donald Trump.

For example

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

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Some Tesla investors are losing patience with Elon as the stock continues to decline

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Elon Musk used to be a guy who occasionally did eccentric things, like smoking weed on-air with Joe Rogan and firing off Twitter posts that cost him $20 million and one of his gigs. But in the last several months have found the world’s richest man stepping things up several notches. Nowadays he’s in the news just about every day, for one thing or another. But now it appears his unpredictable, trolly antics may finally start catching up with him.

According to Forbes, stock in Tesla, Inc., one of the companies of which Musk is CEO, sank to an 11-month low, down 49% from its all-time high in November. Valued at over $1.2 trillion at its peak just over six months ago, it has now fallen to $650 billion.

The stock tumble can partly be blamed on manufacturing issues

Musk’s proposed plan to buy Twitter isn’t helping either. Dan Ives, an analyst with the private banking company Wedbush, says that “patience is wearing very thin” among Tesla shareholders in regard to Musk’s hectic back-and-forth with the social media giant. “This [takeover] circus show has been a major overhang on Tesla’s stock and has been a black eye for Musk so far,” Ives said, adding that “major market pressure for tech stocks” has only exacerbated their concern.

 

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Yesterday I was charging up at a local brewery that has EV chargers on premesis. They have two chargers there.  When I arrived a blue Tesla was charging. When I left the Tesla owner had unplugged their vehicle but left the goddamn thing sitting there.

That pissed me off.  If you’re done charging move your vehicle so the next person can charge.  Next person might be down to their last electrons. I’d tell that owner just because Elon is a douche bag that doesn’t mean you have to be one too. 

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Just came across this about Elon's PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel

Perhaps explains why Elon worked with him.

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I’d say that he’s an ass but that would be insulting to other asses. 

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Elon Musk is demanding that Tesla office workers return to in-person work or leave the company.

"Anyone who wishes to do remote work must be in the office for a minimum (and I mean *minimum*) of 40 hours per week or depart Tesla. This is less than we ask of factory workers," Musk wrote, adding that the office must be the employee's primary workplace where the other workers they regularly interact with are based — "not a remote branch office unrelated to the job duties."

Musk said he would personally review any request for exemption from the policy, but that for the most part, "If you don't show up, we will assume you have resigned."

Tesla (TSLA) did not respond to a request for comment on the policy change, but Musk appeared to confirm it in a tweet of his own early Wednesday when asked on Twitter, "Hey Elon...any additional comment to people who think coming into work is an antiquated concept?" Musk replied: "They should pretend to work somewhere else."

Fuck you Elon. Get the hell out of Tesla before you run it into the ground. 

Edited by 47of74
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After seeing some of his fan humans I really wish there was a way to smack Elon and his fellow sociopaths down that would really sting.  So many problems in this world are caused by him and his fellow sociopaths.  Elon and his fellow sociopaths don't give two shits about the rest of the world in any event and think other humans are mindless drones who should be subjected to slave labor.  Hell if that stick of fuck could get away with it he'd probably have all the amendments after the 12th Amendment repealed.  I've said it fucking before and I'll say it fucking again now.  As long as Elon has any position of influence in Tesla it'll be a cold fucking day in hell before I'd even consider going with Tesla for my next vehicle. 

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shut the fuck up Elon

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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a "super bad feeling" about the economy and wants to cut about 10% of jobs at the electric carmaker, he said in an email to executives on Thursday seen by Reuters.

The message came two days after the world's richest man told employees to return to the workplace or leave the company.

Tesla (TSLA) employed around 100,000 people in the company and its subsidiaries at the end of 2021, according to its annual SEC filing.

 

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Hmmm is someone trying to back out of the deal now?

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Elon Musk accused Twitter of “resisting and thwarting” his right to information about fake accounts on the platform, calling it a “clear material breach” of the terms of their merger agreement in a letter to the company on Monday.

“Mr. Musk reserves all rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” the letter, signed by Skadden attorney Mike Ringler, says.

Twitter shares were down 5% Monday morning.

Musk wrote on Twitter last month that his $44 billion purchase of the company would not move forward until he had more information about the number of fake accounts on the service. Some analysts interpreted the move as a negotiation tactic for a lower price.

There's a clause in the agreement that says if he walks away he would have to pay a $1 billion dollar fee and even then he could be in for more legal trouble if Twitter sued for damages.  Musk may be trying to get out of the deal without having to eat the fee and keep Twitter from going after him in court.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Even one of Elon's kids has had it with his bullshit

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One of Elon Musk's children has petitioned a California court to recognize her new name and gender, saying she no longer wishes to be related to her famous and wealthy father "in any way, shape or form."

Musk's daughter turned 18 earlier this year and made the filing with a county court in Los Angeles soon thereafter. She requests that her legal name be changed to Vivian Jenna Wilson. Wilson is the last name of her mother, Justine Wilson, Musk's ex-wife and mother of five of his seven children.

He has been criticized for some of his statements on Twitter regarding gender identity issues. For example in December 2020 he posted a tweet, since deleted, that said "when you put he/him in your bio" alongside a drawing of an 18th century soldier rubbing blood on his face in front of a pile of dead bodies and wearing a cap that read "I love to oppress."

News of Musk's daughter's filing broke over the weekend on social media, and in stories on celebrity news site The Blast as well as in the Los Angeles Times Monday. There is a hearing for the case set for this Friday.

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Elon is looking to back out now. 

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Elon Musk’s tumultuous $44 billion bid to buy Twitter is on the verge of collapse — after the Tesla CEO sent a letter to Twitter’s board Friday saying he is terminating the acquisition.

The chair of Twitter’s board, Bret Taylor, tweeted Friday that the board is “committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

I hope the board can make el doucherino feel some real pain. 

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