Elon Musk poses on the red carpet for the Axel Springer Awards Ceremony in Berlin
Photo provider: AFP
Elon Musk has a lot to settle before completing its $ 44 billion acquisition of Twitter Inc., including getting accurate measurements of bots on social media platforms and completing transaction funding. I warned that there was a problem.
In an interview with Bloomberg News Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwaite at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha, Musk said the proportion of fake, spam and bot accounts in the service is “still a very important issue.” Said. “And, of course, the question is whether the debt portion of the round will come together and shareholders will vote in favor.”
After signing a deal to buy Twitter for $ 54.20 per share (€ 51.4) in April, Musk repeatedly asked about disclosures about fake accounts and speculated that he would like to lower the price of the transaction or withdraw altogether. I’m fanning. His lawyer said Twitter must work by providing the requested data so that Musk can secure the debt loans needed to complete the transaction.
The bank has promised to provide a $ 13 billion (€ 12.3 billion) debt loan to support the acquisition of Musk. Lenders include Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corporation and Barclays Plc.
A 50-year-old entrepreneur revealed in the forum that he was thinking about ways to improve the service. He said he wouldn’t necessarily be CEO, but would be responsible for “driving the product” on Twitter, just like Tesla and SpaceX Prolation Technologies.
“Ideally, I want to be like 80% of North America, but maybe half the world, or ultimately something on Twitter,” he said. “And that means it has to be attractive to people. Obviously, they can’t be a place where they feel uncomfortable or harassed, or they just won’t use it.”
Musk said he didn’t expect business operations in China to cause problems if he dominated Twitter. The CEO of Tesla, who is also the wealthiest person in the world, believes that China is the main production base and that it is expanding the consumer market for electric vehicles.
Twitter is officially banned in China, but we use Twitter to spread our messages abroad. Sometimes with the help of its own spambot army. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com Inc., hinted at a potential conflict in a tweet shortly after the announcement of Twitter’s acquisition: “Did the Chinese government gain a little leverage in the town square?”
Musk on Tuesday refused to speak confidently that Twitter deals were underway, in a less lively tone than he would use when discussing Tesla’s ventures and humanoid robots. He has repeatedly raised the issue of bots as an open issue, suggesting that the deal remains open for collapse.
Musk said he wanted to “hold” the acquisition while investigating how many Twitter users were real people, and then filed a formal letter with the Securities and Exchange Commission to Twitter executives. I told him that he might leave the deal. If the company did nothing more to prove the size of its user base. Twitter responded by allowing Musk access to the full fire hose of public tweets, but it’s unclear if that data really helps to calculate the number of bots.
In May, Musk discontinued plans to partially fund the purchase of Twitter with a margin loan related to Tesla’s stock, expanding the size of the equity component of the transaction. Mask’s agreement to buy Twitter is not subject to funding terms, but the terms and conditions require Twitter to provide the reasonable cooperation that Mask requires to support the funding arrangements.
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