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Seems like an amazing move by Elon. Buy a sizable portion of the business to hold hostage, and then make the company an offer that they essentially can’t refuse
by ryanSrich 5y ago
Seems like an amazing move by Elon. Buy a sizable portion of the business to hold hostage, and then make the company an offer that they essentially can’t refuse because of fiduciary responsibility. If they reject Elon’s offer the stock price will sink like a rock. They pretty much have to take it.
- wavefunction 5y agoOr the SEC could finally go after Elon for market manipulation. There's always options.
- tonetheman 5y agoTHIS THIS THIS. It is absolutely illegal what he is doing.
- musingsole 5y agoHow? The laws absolutely allow for hostile takeovers. If Twitter gets to determine what to censor because it's a corporation, well, they get to get bought like one too.
- systemvoltage 5y agoThe mental gymnastics going on in this thread is crazy. Let's separate two concerns: 1) Belief system – whether you philosophically support Elon's take over or not 2) Objective facts, corporate finance and legal aspects of what's going on All I can see in this thread is 1) masquerading as 2).
- TMWNN 5y ago>All I can see in this thread is 1) masquerading as 2). Indeed. One would have hoped that Hacker News would be immune from Reddit/Twitter-style "Anything I don't like is illegal/unconstitutional", but apparently not. "Someone buying up shares of a company before he announces a hostile takeover is inside information and thus illegal!" Good grief.
- lcrmorin 5y agoDepends if the offer is made in good faith. If not, this would really look like market manipulation.
- excitom 5y agoWait, aren't you aware of the "It's not illegal if a billionaire does it" rule?
- Majestic121 5y agoBillionaire or not, what is illegal in his move ?
- metamet 5y agoThat is a great question and I wonder the same thing. "I am going to dump 1/10th of the company that I very publicly acquired if they don't do what I want them to do" feels like manipulation since he's controlling the value of such a large amount of it. But is it illegal to be willing to lose money if a threat isn't met? Furthermore, would it be illegal for him to dump his shares, allow the trajectory to tank the price further, then rebuy when it bottoms, rinse and repeat?
- meatsauce 5y agoThat's called a hostile takeover. Part of being a public company. No, you are allowed to sell your shares if you don't want them anymore.
- l33t2328 5y agoIt’s not illegal to say “I want to buy more shares at what I believe to be a generous price. If the board won’t sell me these shares, I don’t trust the judgement of the board and will subsequently sell my existing shares.”
- zwily 5y agoNo it's not.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pid-1 5y agoThis amazing move is considered a form of maket manipulation in my country. Not sure about US stock markets.
- leereeves 5y agoWhat law forbids offering to buy a company?
- eatsyourtacos 5y ago'Knowing' you will put an offer to buy a company is insider information. The assumption here is he has been acting on this information recently and it was part of his plan. Unless you think he just woke up today and said: You know what, I'm going to buy Twitter! Which, I mean.. given Elon maybe that's what happened. But if it was premeditated then he has clearly been acting on insider information.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- xiphias2 5y agoI can assure you that the CEO and the board has much more insider information than Elon.
- eatsyourtacos 5y agoDuh, but they are not acting on the insider information. Elon is. He bought shares, then put in an offer which drives his existing shares up. Perhaps you can argue until he sells them he isn't acting.. perhaps.. but if he sells them today, are you still telling me he isn't acting on insider information?
- xiphias2 5y agoFrom the SEC website: Who is an insider? An “insider” is an officer, director, 10% stockholder and anyone who possesses inside information because of his or her relationship with the Company or with an officer, director or principal stockholder of the Company. A principal shareholder is a person that directly or indirectly owns or controls more than 10% of any class of voting shares or securities of a company. The principal shareholder has the authority to vote using those voting shares. Elon has less than 10% share (9.2%), so he's not an insider. Probably he stayed under 10% because of this law.
- eatsyourtacos 5y ago>Seems like an amazing move by Elon You and I have very different definitions of the word "amazing"
- colechristensen 5y ago> amaze (v.) > "overwhelm or confound with sudden surprise or wonder," 1580s, back-formation from Middle English amased "stunned, dazed, bewildered," (late 14c.), earlier "stupefied, irrational, foolish" (c. 1200), from Old English amasod, from a- (1), probably used here as an intensive prefix, + *mæs (see maze). Related: Amazed; amazing. "amazing" never meant "this is of surprisingly high quality and good"
- UrsaMedius 5y agoIt means that today.
- colechristensen 5y agoYou say, in response to somebody using it to mean something else. There is a strange circular logic to saying words mean something new because they are commonly used in a new way and at the same time telling somebody how they're using a word is wrong because it doesn't match this new meaning.
- robonerd 5y agoJustifying a prescriptive attitude with descriptivist arguments is farcical.
- fluster 5y agoHere's another dictionary (https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/amazing https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/amazing): 1. Causing great surprise or wonder; astonishing. 1.1 [informal] Startlingly impressive Did pointedly ignoring common usage add anything here?
- 5y ago
- dkjaudyeqooe 5y agoThat's not how it works, the board would look at the long term value of the company, not the current price or what it will be in the next few weeks if Elon sold. For instance Twitter stock was $60 last october, if they didn't ask for at least that it would be shortchanging shareholders and also imply a declining company.
- xwdv 5y agoWe will never see those prices again. They occurred during overvalued and speculative market conditions and we will not return to that for several years, if ever.
- mrleinad 5y agoTwitter stock price target for financial institutions is 30 dollars. They're shorting it, and giddy about the board rejecting Elon's proposal.
- fastball 5y agoYou don't need an implication of decline when the market has already explicitly indicated it believes Twitter is declining as evidenced by the falling stock price.
- outside1234 5y agoNo, if they reject it, they will just ask for something like $80 a share and say that that is what they feel is the true value.
- kadomony 5y agoAmazing? This is exactly the type of move I'd expect from someone like Elon who lacks empathy. He is a sociopath. The fact that a sociopath wants to be a king of social media is disturbing.
- tomlin 5y agoWow. This community isn't what it used to be. Sociopath? Don't you think you should validate that claim? This isn't a reductive Hasan Piker stream.
- pram 5y agoI'm amused you think sociopaths aren't already the kings of social media.
- meatsauce 5y agoThose poor sociopathic one-party state marxists at twitter "trust & safety." Once Elon has full control of Twitter, they can always leave and go start their own platform.
- fastball 5y agoWho exactly is Musk demonstrating a lack of empathy for in this situation?
- hypersoar 5y agoIt doesn't take a genius to arrive at this strategy. Just tens of billions of dollars.
- Melatonic 5y agoHopefully your correct and Twitter tanks and maybe we can finally be rid of this crap I don't hate Twitter like I hate Facebook (mainly for ideological reasons and their propensity for exploitation) but god damn is their interface and entire product model annoying.