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My personal opinion is that Levine was always off base in one important way- Musk always intended to buy Twitter, and this was merely a negotiating tactic on pr

My personal opinion is that Levine was always off base in one important way- Musk always intended to buy Twitter, and this was merely a negotiating tactic on price. He bid at the wrong time, so he's paying a lot more than he "should", and this whole thing was an attempt to get the price down. I don't think at any point was he actually backing out of the deal, and I certainly don't think the whole thing was an elaborate scheme to sell Tesla stock.

toiletfuneral 4y ago
arcticbull 4y ago
You don't sign a purchase agreement with absolutely zero wiggle room to negotiate (and agree to the sellers additional seller-friendly terms along the way) in order to lower the price. You negotiate before you sign the agreement. This is like going into a Honda dealership, signing a bill of sale at 20% over MSRP for a Civic without looking at it, then arguing you should get a discount because the floor mats are ugly. He fucked around, and he found out. There's a reason everyone incorporates in Delaware. They don't have time for shenanigans.
- kcplate 4y ago
  > You don't sign a purchase agreement with absolutely zero wiggle room to negotiate You also don’t do that for a company you don’t truly intend to purchase, especially when being guided by lawyers that only you and perhaps a dozen other people in the world can afford to engage for representation. Whatever all this drama was…it’s way too early to make any informed judgement about motivations of the parties involved.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    It’s pretty evident that Musk is falling into the same sort of spiral that autocrats do when they surround themselves with sycophants and get used to breaking the rules for fun. What signal does he have that he’s gone too far? Well… none… until Delaware Chancery requires him to pay tens of billions of dollars that he signed over on a lark. IMO the fact that he made even one tweet ever about this whole debacle (prior to resolution) is evidence that he can’t trust his team (or his team is truly bad).
    - kcplate 4y ago
      A lark is fleeting feeling. This was far from it. This wasnt an overnight whim…it was weeks in the making. If it was a lark, Musk would have backed down before anything was signed or made the offer terms completely unpalatable to Twitters board but instead he made them an offer they wanted to refuse, but couldn’t. Musk definitely wanted to buy it and was more than willing at that price. Your opinion relies on a couple things that are pretty unlikely. One, that someone as successful as Musk wouldn’t engage counsel that he completely trusts with 20% of his net worth. Two, that he went down this road without a real commitment to buy it, despite spending a ton of money in the effort to buy it. The market turned, the valuation changed, and Musk tried a tactic to renegotiate his position. In the end, he is going to ultimately get what he really wanted, but the value of what he wanted will take a little more time to recover.
      - ethanbond 4y ago
        A lark is not a fleeting feeling. It’s “a quest for amusement.” This is pretty much the only thing that explains all of the behavior. He was doing it for fun and no one stopped him in time. Partly because, as has been reported, so many in his inner circle thought he wasn’t serious about it. He entered into an entirely reckless contract because he was riding the high of his Big Joke. Not sure what’s hard to believe about an egomaniacal self-described troll getting himself into a tricky situation. Schoolchildren do it all the time. Who knows what the deal is with his relationship with counsel but go ahead and read some of their filings to see what a clown show it is. Some of them seem to have been written by Musk himself and making claims that don’t even resemble legal arguments.
        kcplate 4y ago
        > go ahead and read some of their filings to see what a clown show it is I have, but I am not a lawyer. Perhaps you are and can speak intelligently to their validity. What I will say is that there is a better than average chance that exceptionally good and well paid lawyers drew them up and a better than average chance that many of the armchair legal analysts commenting here and elsewhere are not good and well paid lawyers. Wealthy business people I know are not adverse to risk, but they are methodical and are generally careful when large amounts of their own capital is at risk. This smells more to me like a calculated negotiation tactic to try grab a lower buy price that didn’t pay off for Musk more than anything else. In then end, he got what he originally wanted and at the price he was originally willing to pay.
  - 9935c101ab17a66 4y ago
    > You also don’t do that for a company you don’t truly intend to purchase You can defend Musk all you want, but you simply cannot make the argument that he is a traditional, by-the-books, conservative business man. He's an impulsive, irrational, self-obsessed, risk-taking billionaire who flouts convention, tradition and consensus. His reckless instincts and his willingness to bend or break 'the rules' have worked incredibly well for him in the past. This time he fucked up big-time. > ...especially when being guided by lawyers that only you and perhaps a dozen other people in the world can afford to engage for representation. You think Musk is the kind of person who lets lawyers lead him around by the nose, that he is someone with a well-known and well-established reverence for the legal profession and the rule of law? This is absolutely not the case. > Whatever all this drama was…it’s way too early to make any informed judgement about motivations of the parties involved. This is hilarious because the first part of your comment is literally you presenting sharing your view Musk's motivation (eg. "He has every intention of buying Twitter because he signed a purchase agreement! People who sign purchase agreements don't not buy the companies they committed to purchasing!"). Anyway, it's definitely not too early to make an informed judgement about the Twitter conflagration. Musk did everything he could to drag this debacle into the spotlight rather than handling it more discretely. He tried to weaponize public opinion for his own aims, and he also (very publicly) made a series of misleading or patently false allegations about Twitter in order to get his way. It's too late to argue that we should approach this with a neutral perspective.
    - kcplate 4y ago
      Nah, I am not defending Musk. Frankly I don’t care if he buys Twitter and burns it to the ground, loses all his cash, becomes a pauper; or spins it into something bigger and sells it for $1T; or doesn’t buy it at all and is penalized and socially destroyed on the world’s stage. I’m literally indifferent to to the man and his musings and I think that gives me a bit of a different perspective then the binary Musk opinions here on HN. However, my opinions are as uninformed to Musk’s internal intentions as all of the armchair lawyering and MBA’ing that is going on here…I guess I am just willing to admit it. What is a fact is at the end of the day he is buying a company that he wanted, at a price he was willing to pay, and will do with it what he wants, despite Twitter’s attempts initially to keep him from buying it and apparently half the worlds horror that he is actually going to get it.
nocoiner 4y ago
This is… not how your negotiate on price. What you call his “bid” was in fact his binding definitive agreement to acquire the company at an agreed upon price. Yeah, plenty of deals get re-traded between signing and closing and purchase prices get re-cut, but the extreme bad faith by Musk after he signed the merger agreement made it functionally impossible for twitter’s board to do anything except hold him to the deal he made.
9935c101ab17a66 4y ago
This is purely revisionism / spin. If musk truly did want to buy Twitter but wanted to do so at a discount because the shares were overvalued, you really think this is the plan any sane person would come up with? Waiving due diligence and rapidly signing a purchase agreement that leaves you no outs and no wiggle room? Absolutely not. Musk is a narcissistic, unstable ego maniac but even for him, your retcon'd version of events is laughable.
irthomasthomas 4y ago
Close. Read his text messages. He wanted to reduce headcount, both to remove "the woke" and to reduce the wage bill. "2 day a week office requirement = 20% voluntary departures" Everything he has done since signing the deal has been about delaying so he could sell TSLA, and letting tweeps know their values don't align with his. Hence asking the court to release his texts, and going full Russia Today right before he makes this offer to complete.

toiletfuneral 4y ago

arcticbull 4y ago

You don't sign a purchase agreement with absolutely zero wiggle room to negotiate (and agree to the sellers additional seller-friendly terms along the way) in order to lower the price. You negotiate before you sign the agreement. This is like going into a Honda dealership, signing a bill of sale at 20% over MSRP for a Civic without looking at it, then arguing you should get a discount because the floor mats are ugly. He fucked around, and he found out. There's a reason everyone incorporates in Delaware. They don't have time for shenanigans.

kcplate 4y ago
> You don't sign a purchase agreement with absolutely zero wiggle room to negotiate You also don’t do that for a company you don’t truly intend to purchase, especially when being guided by lawyers that only you and perhaps a dozen other people in the world can afford to engage for representation. Whatever all this drama was…it’s way too early to make any informed judgement about motivations of the parties involved.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  It’s pretty evident that Musk is falling into the same sort of spiral that autocrats do when they surround themselves with sycophants and get used to breaking the rules for fun. What signal does he have that he’s gone too far? Well… none… until Delaware Chancery requires him to pay tens of billions of dollars that he signed over on a lark. IMO the fact that he made even one tweet ever about this whole debacle (prior to resolution) is evidence that he can’t trust his team (or his team is truly bad).
  - kcplate 4y ago
    A lark is fleeting feeling. This was far from it. This wasnt an overnight whim…it was weeks in the making. If it was a lark, Musk would have backed down before anything was signed or made the offer terms completely unpalatable to Twitters board but instead he made them an offer they wanted to refuse, but couldn’t. Musk definitely wanted to buy it and was more than willing at that price. Your opinion relies on a couple things that are pretty unlikely. One, that someone as successful as Musk wouldn’t engage counsel that he completely trusts with 20% of his net worth. Two, that he went down this road without a real commitment to buy it, despite spending a ton of money in the effort to buy it. The market turned, the valuation changed, and Musk tried a tactic to renegotiate his position. In the end, he is going to ultimately get what he really wanted, but the value of what he wanted will take a little more time to recover.
    - ethanbond 4y ago
      A lark is not a fleeting feeling. It’s “a quest for amusement.” This is pretty much the only thing that explains all of the behavior. He was doing it for fun and no one stopped him in time. Partly because, as has been reported, so many in his inner circle thought he wasn’t serious about it. He entered into an entirely reckless contract because he was riding the high of his Big Joke. Not sure what’s hard to believe about an egomaniacal self-described troll getting himself into a tricky situation. Schoolchildren do it all the time. Who knows what the deal is with his relationship with counsel but go ahead and read some of their filings to see what a clown show it is. Some of them seem to have been written by Musk himself and making claims that don’t even resemble legal arguments.
      - kcplate 4y ago
        > go ahead and read some of their filings to see what a clown show it is I have, but I am not a lawyer. Perhaps you are and can speak intelligently to their validity. What I will say is that there is a better than average chance that exceptionally good and well paid lawyers drew them up and a better than average chance that many of the armchair legal analysts commenting here and elsewhere are not good and well paid lawyers. Wealthy business people I know are not adverse to risk, but they are methodical and are generally careful when large amounts of their own capital is at risk. This smells more to me like a calculated negotiation tactic to try grab a lower buy price that didn’t pay off for Musk more than anything else. In then end, he got what he originally wanted and at the price he was originally willing to pay.
- 9935c101ab17a66 4y ago
  > You also don’t do that for a company you don’t truly intend to purchase You can defend Musk all you want, but you simply cannot make the argument that he is a traditional, by-the-books, conservative business man. He's an impulsive, irrational, self-obsessed, risk-taking billionaire who flouts convention, tradition and consensus. His reckless instincts and his willingness to bend or break 'the rules' have worked incredibly well for him in the past. This time he fucked up big-time. > ...especially when being guided by lawyers that only you and perhaps a dozen other people in the world can afford to engage for representation. You think Musk is the kind of person who lets lawyers lead him around by the nose, that he is someone with a well-known and well-established reverence for the legal profession and the rule of law? This is absolutely not the case. > Whatever all this drama was…it’s way too early to make any informed judgement about motivations of the parties involved. This is hilarious because the first part of your comment is literally you presenting sharing your view Musk's motivation (eg. "He has every intention of buying Twitter because he signed a purchase agreement! People who sign purchase agreements don't not buy the companies they committed to purchasing!"). Anyway, it's definitely not too early to make an informed judgement about the Twitter conflagration. Musk did everything he could to drag this debacle into the spotlight rather than handling it more discretely. He tried to weaponize public opinion for his own aims, and he also (very publicly) made a series of misleading or patently false allegations about Twitter in order to get his way. It's too late to argue that we should approach this with a neutral perspective.
  - kcplate 4y ago
    Nah, I am not defending Musk. Frankly I don’t care if he buys Twitter and burns it to the ground, loses all his cash, becomes a pauper; or spins it into something bigger and sells it for $1T; or doesn’t buy it at all and is penalized and socially destroyed on the world’s stage. I’m literally indifferent to to the man and his musings and I think that gives me a bit of a different perspective then the binary Musk opinions here on HN. However, my opinions are as uninformed to Musk’s internal intentions as all of the armchair lawyering and MBA’ing that is going on here…I guess I am just willing to admit it. What is a fact is at the end of the day he is buying a company that he wanted, at a price he was willing to pay, and will do with it what he wants, despite Twitter’s attempts initially to keep him from buying it and apparently half the worlds horror that he is actually going to get it.

nocoiner 4y ago

This is… not how your negotiate on price. What you call his “bid” was in fact his binding definitive agreement to acquire the company at an agreed upon price. Yeah, plenty of deals get re-traded between signing and closing and purchase prices get re-cut, but the extreme bad faith by Musk after he signed the merger agreement made it functionally impossible for twitter’s board to do anything except hold him to the deal he made.

9935c101ab17a66 4y ago

This is purely revisionism / spin. If musk truly did want to buy Twitter but wanted to do so at a discount because the shares were overvalued, you really think this is the plan any sane person would come up with? Waiving due diligence and rapidly signing a purchase agreement that leaves you no outs and no wiggle room? Absolutely not. Musk is a narcissistic, unstable ego maniac but even for him, your retcon'd version of events is laughable.

irthomasthomas 4y ago

Close. Read his text messages. He wanted to reduce headcount, both to remove "the woke" and to reduce the wage bill. "2 day a week office requirement = 20% voluntary departures" Everything he has done since signing the deal has been about delaying so he could sell TSLA, and letting tweeps know their values don't align with his. Hence asking the court to release his texts, and going full Russia Today right before he makes this offer to complete.