What would happen if the richest man in the world succeeds in a hostile takeover of one of the largest social media platforms, which serves as a public town square for hundreds of millions of people each day? Well, Elon Musk, a billionaire entrepreneur, has bought Twitter for $44 billion on April 25th, slamming the company's management and claiming to be the only person capable of unlocking its "extraordinary potential". This acquisition is one of the biggest tech deals in history, and certainly will have tremendous impact on both Twitter and its users. In this article, I will supply a complete and detailed timeline to the build-up of this acquisition and explain the reasons behind Musk’s decision to buy the company.
 
On April 4th, Twitter published a notice confirming that the Musk has taken a 9.2% share (73,486,938 shares of common stock) of the company, worth around $2.9 billion based on the stock price at the time, making him the largest shareholder of Twitter. The confirmation of the share acquisition, which had been reported over the previous week, sent Twitter's stock surging; it started trading at a 23% premium to its earlier closing price ahead of the market's opening.
 
On April 5th, Twitter has announced that it is appointing Elon Musk to its Board of Directors. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said he was "excited" to announce Musk's appointment to the company's board of directors. "Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our board," he said in a tweet. Musk, who now has more than 90 million Twitter followers, said he was “looking forward to working” with the board “to make significant improvements to Twitter in coming months”. Twitter also publicly stated that it has been working on an edit button!
 
On April 10th, Agrawal said that Musk had declined the offer to join the board. He said: “I believe this is for the best. We have and will always value input from our shareholders whether they are on our board or not. Elon is our biggest shareholder and we will remain open to his input.” Why would Musk decline the board seat, since his goal was to influence and improve Twitter, and having a seat in the board gives him that opportunity? Musk was to join the board as a Class II director, which meant that he could not own more than 15% of the company. With hindsight, we can see that he most likely thought that 15% limited control over the company.
 
On April 14th, the billionaire’s plan was revealed - Elon Musk offered to pay $54.20 per share to buy 100% of the company. It would be an all-cash offer of $43.4 billion. “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,” wrote Elon Musk in an email to Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chairperson of the board. “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. As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter … My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.” Essentially, he threatens to sell his shares if the Twitter board does not accept his offer, which would result in a massive price drop.
 
On April 25th, the big day had finally arrived – Twitter's Board of Directors accepted Musk’s takeover bid, despite previously calling it a “poison pill”. Musk aims to make several changes both to the Twitter product itself and to the management team: “I want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.” Musk said in a press release.
 
Now, let's answer the big question - why would Musk do all of this? It is no debate that Elon Musk is a visionary who sees far into the future; his companies aim to achieve long-term visions in order to build a better future for humanity. For instance, Tesla aims to lead the transition from gasoline cars to electric, and SpaceX’s goal is to make human life multi-planetary. In the case of Twitter, Musk wants to build a definitive platform that serves as a large-scale discussion forum, where freedom of speech – which he believes to be “the bedrock of a functioning democracy” - is encouraged.
 
Musk claims to be fighting for the freedom of speech, but are there more reasons to his acquisition? In Meta’s (formerly Facebook) Q4 report of 2021, they revealed that for the first time ever, Facebook is gradually losing users. Indeed, the younger generation have moved on to newer social media platforms. With the largest news forum slowly ebbing away, Musk saw the potential of Twitter. However, he believes that the current Twitter management team is not capable of taking advantage of this opportunity. Instead of keeping Twitter as a public company (i.e. on the stock market), Musk wants to take it private and make major adjustments, without the pressure of having to perform well in terms of revenue and profit (at least in the short term). Moreover, the market cap of Twitter (around $30 billion) is much smaller than those of other social media companies, such as Meta/Facebook (over $500 billion), TikTok/Bytedance (around $140 billion), and Snapchat (around $40 billion), considering Twitter’s great potential; in some ways, $44 billion is quite a good deal for Musk!
 
Whether for good or for bad, Twitter will soon be Elon Musk’s territory. Whilst this acquisition is supported by many, including Twitter’s founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey who claims that Musk is “the singular solution” he trusts, there are many skeptics who doubt the vision which Musk has, including some of Twitter’s largest shareholders. Elon Musk, who is arguably already the most popular figure on Twitter, has now declared himself the king of the platform.