Billionaire Elon Musk has offered to buy micro blogging site Twitter at a whopping cost of about $43 billion.
Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, has offered to pay $54.20 per share in cash, representing a 54% premium over the January 28 closing price.
“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,” Musk said in a filing with the US securities and exchange commission on Thursday.
“However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company,” Elon Musk added in his filing.
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Elon Musk said that he has made a “best and final” offer to buy Twitter that has extraordinary potential, which he will unlock.
Enol Musk’s current net worth is about $260 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, compared to Twitter’s market valuation of about $37 billion.
“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,” said Musk.