“..[l]et me assure you: the world is full of mediocre men who are stunning successes.”
I think of this Fran Lebowitz quote anytime the name Elon Musk appears in my inbox. Which unfortunately, since I am subscribed to a trillion financial news outlets to keep you lovely people properly updated on what’s what… is a lot.
Another Fran favorite that comes to mind in relation to Elon,
“All God’s children are not beautiful. Most of God’s children are, in fact, barely presentable.”
If I have been able to make anything painfully clear throughout my 2 years writing at Equity Guru it is that one, I am a covert socialist and two, I have a visceral contempt for Elon Musk.
Seeing as it is the end of summer, I am trying to maintain some semblance of a tan and the peace that comes along with being in the sun and saltwater. As such, you can read my scathing political opinions of Sir Musk in Reality Check: Elon Musk is not our Lord or Saviour, Elon Musk’s Space Capitalism: Reason 1 of 1000 I Can’t Sleep at Night and Just Billionaire Things.
For now, I am going to bypass all commentary on his unusual size of head and general hypocrisy to last week’s whistleblower who was actually Twitter’s former security chief and how he is kind of Elon Musk’s knight in shining armour in regard to the lawsuit that arose from his attempted termination of his Twitter acquisition.
Here’s hoping I can make it all a little less confusing.
A timeline of how the richest person in the world said he wanted to own one of the most popular social media platforms – until he said he didn’t.
Throughout this saga Musk has been described as a suitor, critic, and now, legal adversary of Twitter, a platform with which he has over 100 million followers…
Late January – Musk begins investing in Twitter.
March 14 – Musk’s stake in Twitter reaches 9.2% (making him the largest shareholder in the company – it was giving hostile takeover energy)
April 4 – Musk discloses his stake in Twitter. Which was worth a casual $2.89 billion. Twitter shares rise more than 27% on the announcement.
April 5 – Twitter announces Musk will join the company’s board of directors.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal does the pleasantries thing: “He’s both a passionate believer and intense critic of the service which is exactly what we need on @Twitter, and in the boardroom, to make us stronger in the long-term. Welcome Elon!”
April 10 – Musk says he will not join the Twitter board after all.
Twitter CEO Agrawal makes this really uncomfortable statement in response…”There will be distractions ahead, but our goals and priorities remain unchanged. The decisions we make and how we make them remain in our hands, no one else’s.”
April 14 – Musk offers to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share, valuing the company at about $43 billion.
Musk pretends he’s changing the world for the better: “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… Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”
April 15 – Now it gets dramatic… Twitter adopts a “poison pill provision” to prevent the Musk acquisition.
A poison pill allows current stockholders to purchase additional shares at a discounted price, diluting the shares owned by Musk and making it more expensive for him to buy the company (so petty!) Twitter said the poison pill will be triggered if any individual or entity acquires at least 15% of the company’s shares.
April 25 – Big day! Twitter accepts Musk’s offer to acquire the company and values the deal at $44 billion!
April 29 – Over a 3-day period after Musk and Twitter reach a deal, he sells about $8.5 billion worth in Tesla stock to help finance the bid. (Hilarious to think of a billionaire shuffling around his finances to make a purchase).
May 6 – In a pitch deck for investors, Musk says he will quintuple Twitter’s revenue by 2028, increasing annual earnings to $26.4 billion. (Only a billionaire white man would walk into a room and make this type of assertion).
May 10 – Musk says he would reverse Twitter’s ban of Donald Trump’s account. There’s so much I could say here but just, ew. Read Just Billionaire Things for more.
May 13 – Cue Musk having a minor public breakdown…
Morning: He tweets that the deal is “temporarily on hold,” citing concern over “the prevalence of bot and spam accounts on the platform”.
Moments after: He posts a Reuters report about a public filing from Twitter earlier in May that said fake accounts made up less than 5% of users on the platform
Seconds after: He claimed to not trust above data saying he wants “details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users.”
Two hours later: Musk says he’s “still committed” to the deal.
May 26 – Twitter shareholders bring a class-action lawsuit against Musk over alleged stock manipulation tied to the tumultuous acquisition process. (At the time, Twitter’s stock had fallen more than 12% since Musk announced his bid).
June 6 – Musk threatens to pull out of the deal if Twitter doesn’t provide additional information about the prevalence of bots on its platform.
In a statement, Twitter said it had been sharing information with Musk “in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement.”
July 8 – Musk moves to terminate his acquisition of Twitter.
July 12 – Twitter sues Musk in Chancery Court in Delaware to force him to complete the deal.
“Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests,” Twitter said in the lawsuit. “Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away.”
Is it just me, or does this sentiment feel eerily metaphoric of Musk’s entire existence? Also Trump’s…
August 23 – The Washington Post publishes an article titled “Former security chief claims Twitter buried ‘egregious deficiencies’”.
Subheading: In an explosive whistleblower complaint obtained by The Washington Post, former Twitter security chief Peiter ‘Mudge’ Zatko alleges the company misled regulators about lax security and spam.
Context: The complaint was filed last month with the SEC. He alleges…
- That he warned colleagues the company’s servers were running out-of-date and vulnerable
- That executives withheld dire facts about the number of breaches, instead presenting directors with rosy charts measuring unimportant changes.
- And that executive bonuses of up to $10 million tied to daily user growth have significantly disincentivized them to eliminate spam on Twitter…
Today (August 25th) – So what does this mean for Musk?
That “executive bonuses of up to $10 million tied to daily user growth have significantly disincentivized them to eliminate spam on Twitter” could help Elon, seeing as his entire case hinges on allegations that Twitter is miscounting how many bots it has.
While the binding agreement Musk signed to purchase the company didn’t include any exceptions for bot numbers, the accusation that Twitter has misled shareholders and regulators about the number could help his case.
And good news! If he ends up being permitted to abandon the deal, Musk will be forced to pay a soft $1 billion termination fee.
Until next week.