Elon Musk Offers To Buy Twitter For $41.39 Bn

Billionaire Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for $41.39 billion, a regulatory filing showed on Thursday.

Musk's offer price of $54.20 per share represents a 38 per cent premium to the closing price of Twitter's stock on April 1, the last trading day before the Tesla CEO's over 9% investment in the company was publicly announced.

Musk called that price his best and final offer, although he provided no details on financing. The offer is non-binding and subject to financing and other conditions.

“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,” Musk said in the filing. “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.”

After Musk announced his stake, Twitter quickly offered him a seat on its board on the condition that he not own more than 14.9% of the company’s outstanding stock, according to a filing. But the company said five days later that he’d declined.

He didn’t explain why, but the decision coincided with a barrage of now-deleted tweets from Musk proposing major changes to the company, such as dropping ads — its chief source of revenue — and transforming its San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter. Musk left a few clues on Twitter about his thinking, such as by “liking” a tweet that summarized the events as Musk going from “largest shareholder for Free Speech” to being “told to play nice and not speak freely.”

(With inputs from AP and Reuters)