this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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The problem with this remembering of events. Is that what would be more costly. 44 billion dollars. Or a fine that he would be able to pay off with an hour or two's earnings. And an uneventful SEC investigation? And if the 44 billion was the better of the two options. Then what is he hiding that the SEC would absolutely own his ass over? And why is it a good thing that he's hiding it?
If you look in to the court case, he was 100% going to be forced to buy it. There was a penalty fee for backing out but it didn't apply
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/13/elon-musk-cant-just-walk-away-from-twitter-deal-by-paying-1-billion.html
I'm no rich billionaire with insider knowledge but my confident guess is he could finance it on his terms or be forced to liquidate stock to pay straight cash. He chose the option that wouldn't very possible take him out of the top .01%
Only if it went to trial and the contract held up. So no not 100%. And even then he was only in that position due to his ignorance and hubris. Elon isn't a smart man.
Agreed, but the writing was on the wall that he was not going to win - the judge had previously sided with sellers in these kinds of contracts in other cases.
If it had gone to trial and he was ruled against, he would have VERY likely been forced to settle the transaction rapidly with his own capital, rather than have time to arrange for the financing that he ended up using.
I think it's pretty clear in retrospect - he stubbornly tried to get out of the purchase while people who were smarter than him kept telling him he needs to start accepting reality that he's going to own twitter soon. Finally he gave in when he realized he had a lot more to lose than a few billion, or maybe he got a call from daddy who told him to stop being a moron and arrange a loan.
It's very unlikely though that it would have ever gone to trial or been settled against him. The last thing Twitter would have wanted was discovery on the case. Musk makes a lot of bullshit claims. But Twitter did too. And having to go into Discovery to prove that they were not trying to be misleading etc would not have gone well for them. They would have settled in a heartbeat for a song. It's great and all to see Elon eat crow and flounder. But I wish we could have seen the Twitter execs doing it too. Oh well.
I think a big part of it was that he announced he’s buy it for a ridiculously over-valued price and their stock surged as people bought in so they could get a slice of the pie.
If he didn’t follow through that would have been clear stock manipulation and, unlike dogecoin, there are more severe repercussions for that…
That's just an argument for not having billionaires who can do that sort of thing though. Especially fucking morons like Elon who've accomplished nothing of real note in his life beyond having money. Though sadly in America and much of the West that's all you need to have for people to worship you. We really are a bunch of sick monkeys.
I think he's already been in trouble with the SEC over alleged Tesla stock manipulation (using Twitter to claim he was taking the company private at 420 a share or something), so maybe it could have become a real mess, so he decided to just go ahead with the deal.
He also manipulated crypto with his oversized influence through Twitter, though afaik the SEC can't do shit about that as crypto was (and still is) basically unregulated.
One of the sanctions the SEC seeks for repeat offenders is a ban on serving as an officer of any public company.