[imagesource: Kristen Radtke / The Verge / Getty Images]

Elon Musk and Twitter have a bit of a love-hate relationship.

Musk loves tweeting, and Twitter must love the increase in user activity that his tweets often cause, but the world’s wealthiest person is also prone to criticising the social media giant.

Moaning only gets you so far and I guess Musk realised that if you want something to change in the ways you see fit, you may as well buy the bloody thing.

Bloomberg reports that Musk has launched a $43 billion “hostile takeover” of Twitter:

Musk has made a “best and final” offer to buy Twitter Inc., saying the company has extraordinary potential and he is the person to unlock it.

The world’s richest person will offer $54.20 per share in cash, representing a 54% premium over the Jan. 28 closing price and a value of about $43 billion. The social media company’s shares soared 18% in pre-market trading.

Yes, he managed to sneak a 420 reference in there. Even when there are billions on the line, he can’t resist.

In fact, most days he can’t resist:

69.420% of statistics are false

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 9, 2022

Other reports put the purchase figure at closer to $42 billion. In the past two weeks, Musk announced that he had acquired a 9,2% stake in Twitter and then rejected an offer to join the board of directors.

The 50-year-old SpaceX founder announced the offer in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission today.

Adding Twitter to SpaceX and Tesla would make for quite a triple up:

In a letter to Twitter’s board, Musk said he believes Twitter “will neither thrive nor serve [its free speech] societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company”

The takeover is unlikely to be a drawn-out process. “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.

Given that Twitter’s share price reached as high as $70 last year, $54,20 may be too low to push a deal through.

Musk has hired investment banking giant Morgan Stanley as his adviser for the takeover.

[source:bloomberg]