Musk-Twitter Deal Back On?
Elon Musk’s deposition for the Twitter v. Musk suit may have been rescheduled for next week, but the public got some more inside dirt about his plans for Twitter, thanks to the release of two slideshow presentations and a slew of Musk texts.
The texts show Musk and a variety of contacts — including former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, entrepreneur Jason Calacanis, and podcaster Joe Rogan — talking about everything from the blockchain to putting Oprah on Twitter’s board. (That part might be a joke, but with Musk, it’s difficult to tell.) But above all, they’re a chronicle of the deal’s slow implosion.
The texts are light reading, and you can check them out here if you’re so inclined.
See also: Internal Tech Emails (Hacker News), The Chancery Daily.
The 151-page redacted document is a remarkable, voyeuristic record of a few months in the life of the world’s richest (and most overexposed) man and a rare unvarnished glimpse into the overlapping worlds of Silicon Valley, media, and politics. The texts are juicy, but not because they are lurid, particularly offensive, or offer up some scandalous Muskian master plan—quite the opposite.
Elizabeth Lopatto (MacRumors):
Elon Musk is said to have sent another offer letter to buy Twitter at $54.20 a share, Bloomberg reported based on anonymous sources. That’s the same price he originally proposed in April before trying to back out of the deal.
Previously:
Update (2022-10-05): Nilay Patel:
Like normally you just say hey court, here’s the settlement agreement between the parties, and the court says, cool, case dismissed. You don’t ask the court to stay the case and adjourn the trial before you’ve settled, and definitely not as a precondition of settling
SEC Filing (via Hacker News):
On October 3, 2022, the Reporting Person’s advisors sent a letter to Twitter (on the Reporting Person’s behalf) notifying Twitter that the Reporting Person intends to proceed to closing of the transaction contemplated by the April 25, 2022 Merger Agreement, on the terms and subject to the conditions set forth therein and pending receipt of the proceeds of the debt financing[…]
There was some grim stuff happening in the Chancery case: multiple bits of evidence suggesting that Peiter Zatko had in fact been in touch with Musk’s team, in advance of the “whistleblowing” release. The Chancery court had just come in with an order giving Twitter extended discovery rights to look for those communications.
If it did turn out that Zatko had been talking to Musk’s team, that would be a very big deal, not only undercutting a big part of Musk’s current case (which he was set to lose anyways) but also falsifying several statements made both to the Delaware court and also to Congress(?!).
I wonder also if the appearance, performative as it is, that Musk is choosing to buy Twitter rather than being forced to buy Twitter is helpful for financing.
This is a scan/OCR of Exhibits H and J from the Twitter v. Musk case, with some of the conversations de-interleaved and of course converted from a fuzzy scan to text to make for easier reading.
I did this so that I could easily read this and, after reading it, I’ve found that most accountings of what was said are, in one way or another, fairly misleading.
See also: Matt Levine.
2 Comments RSS · Twitter
I suspect the recently released text messages has put some preassure on Musk. I mean, all his ultra rich friends must hate him for being outed as psychophantic circle jerkers.
Musk is such a self-absorbed gas bag. I try my best to ignore him, but it's difficult for anyone; it was disheartening to see even Volodymyr Zelenskyy successfully baited by him yesterday—on Twitter, of course.