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Twitter Businesses

Apollo Global Management Willing To Finance a Twitter Buyout (cnbc.com) 54

Posted by BeauHD from the bidding-war dept.
Private equity firm Apollo Global Management would consider providing financing for a Twitter buyout in the form of preferred equity, sources say. CNBC reports: Apollo isn't interested in being part of a private equity consortium that would acquire the social media company, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Any financing Apollo provides would likely come in the form of preferred equity, one of the people said.

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the world's wealthiest person, offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion last week. Twitter's board is likely to reject that offer, according to a Wall Street Journal report. Still, sources of financing are considering their willingness to lend to Musk or another potential buyer, said the people. Twitter had negative cash flow last year, making it an unusual candidate for a leveraged buyout. On Friday, Twitter adopted a limited duration shareholder rights plan, often referred to as a "poison pill," in an effort to fend off a potential hostile takeover. The next day, Musk tweeted "Love Me Tender," suggesting he may make a tender offer to buy shares directly from Twitter shareholders. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey criticized the company's board on Sunday, saying the plots and coups that played out early on in the history of Twitter's board has "consistently been the dysfunction of the company."

"Earlier, he responded to another tweet in the same thread," reports CNBC. "It quoted venture capitalist Fred Destin citing what he called a 'Silicon Valley proverb': 'Good boards don't create good companies, but a bad board will kill a company every time.' Dorsey responded, 'big facts.'"

If the acquisition does get approved, Musk said he wouldn't compensate the Twitter board for serving. "Board salary will be $0 if my bid succeeds, so that's ~$3M/year saved right there," Musk said in a tweet.
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Apollo Global Management Willing To Finance a Twitter Buyout More

Apollo Global Management Willing To Finance a Twitter Buyout

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  • Then rewrite the whole thing in Deno...?

  • Musk has a good plan (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @09:37PM (#62458314)

    Everything I've seen that Musk says about ways he's thinking of improving Twitter, sounds pretty good to me.

    Blue Check people verified on the whims of a select set of insiders? Nope, instead anyone can pay a small fee to be verified.

    User blocked or banned for inconsistent reasons? Well maybe that would happen but at least at a greatly reduced rate, or possibly in much more sensical ways.

    Twitter SF campus turned over to the homeless? Awesome.

    And of course - Edit button.

    Twitter is nuts to reject the price Musk quoted to buy out Twitter, the service can only go further downhill the way it is now and is trending. It would be great to see Musk bring back the vibrant community and free exchange of ideas that Twitter once was, and yet could be.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by ArchieBunker ( 132337 )

      tl;dr

      Billionaire mad that he isn't getting his own way.

    • Twitter is nuts to reject the price Musk quoted to buy out Twitter

      Never accept the first offer. That's the first rule of negotiating.

    • You’re not fooling anyone, Elon.
    • Second that. In fact the board and larger shareholder's response + Jack Dorsey leaving and now commenting on musk's side even though he's one of the top 10 shareholders, points to some sort of skeletons in the cupboard

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gmack ( 197796 )

      User blocked or banned for inconsistent reasons? Well maybe that would happen but at least at a greatly reduced rate, or possibly in much more nonsensical ways.

      That wasn't his proposal. He wanted all speech to be free at any cost(per his tweet) and several of the people who were previously banned, unbanned. He specifically mentioned Alex Jones who, as we all know, is currently being sued for whipping up his nutbag followers so that they got angry enough to start harassing parents who had their children shot at Sandyhook.

      Musk describes himself as a free speech absolutist and while I like his other ideas, this would would turn twitter into 4chan pretty quickly.

      • Re:Musk has a good plan (Score:4, Interesting)

        by stabiesoft ( 733417 ) on Tuesday April 19, 2022 @08:59AM (#62459162) Homepage
        And Alex just recently filed for bankruptcy to avoid paying. I hope alex gets slammed hard, like jail hard. He also skipped out on depo's until the judge ordered a fine of I think 25+K/day until he sat for it. Funny, suddenly he could make it. Alex should have gotten jail time just for skipping out on depo's time after time like the rest of us shmoes would. Especially since he claimed he was ill and yet went to studios on the same day as the depo. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/24... [npr.org] I call that contempt, and that ends with jail.
    • Amazing how you were able to troll without insulting anybody, using foul language, or posting ASCII swastikas.
  • Between a thieving idiot
    And idot thieves.

  • How is this even legal (Score:4, Interesting)

    by guruevi ( 827432 ) on Monday April 18, 2022 @10:50PM (#62458398)

    To translate in plain terms: they are offering to buy the company under current market value in stock that is guaranteed to pay dividends before common stock holders.

    90% of stock is currently being held by âoeother peopleâ such as âoecommon peopleâ pension fund Vanguard currently the majority stock owner of Twitter.

    But SEC wonâ(TM)t investigate this, but theyâ(TM)ll investigate every letter on Musks Twit-feed. Why am I sure they wonâ(TM)t they investigate this, because per OpenSecrets Apollo gave Biden a nice nearly $200k bribe, as well as a $4M âoedonationâ distributed to every other government employee currently in power.

    • $200k, lol. Hunter gets that in less than a week for not getting out of bed.

      Musk is offering to buy the company for a price the board will never reach in a decade. If you treat it as a business rather than an ideological battleground then his offer is actually really good for everyone. Except the useless board.

      • And the people that support censorship and benefit from it.

        • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 )

          If you really think the censorship won't just change to suit Musk, you're the noobest of noobs that ever noobed.

          • Well putting aside the name calling which composes the bulk of your argument and for most people would rule out the need to respond someone who can't bring rationality and reason to the table, lets take a look.

            "If you really think the censorship won't just change to suit Musk"

            What a great example of a person who has been reduced to being an NPC. The statement admits to censorship on Twitter. It does nothing to refute the idea that it's backed by people who benefit from it, and does nothing to say how it ben

            • The statement admits to censorship on Twitter.

              Yeah, I thought we covered this. Twitter can't function without censorship of trolls and disinformation. You want them to stop censorship of shit. It's bigly sad.

              I actually try to think about these things

              Try harder.

              • Ok so you are saying Twitter censorship is fine with you now, and will continue to be fine under musk. So the board / shareholders have nothing to fear and a lot of money to gain from musk's offer

                • Ok so you are saying Twitter censorship is fine with you now

                  Yep.

                  and will continue to be fine under musk.

                  Not necessarily, and probably not. It's working now, he wants to change it. And probably not for the better.

                  So the board / shareholders have nothing to fear and a lot of money to gain from musk's offer

                  If I were them I'd want to take the money and run, assuming I was getting a big piece of it. Twitter's going to fall eventually. Might as well get paid. But none of that means that's what I want to see happen as a user, and there's no reason I should cheer on Elon. He's a bit of an asshole, and I don't think he can do anything that will improve the place. I don't think he can or even will make a s

                  • Let's see if you can follow your own advice. If you don't like Musk's offer and plan for Twitter. "If you don't like it, start your own service
                    In this case "service" is a collection of like-minded billionaires to finance your bid. Do you see how silly your answer sounds?

                    • If Musk ruins Twitter I'll just stop using it, and very little of value will have been lost. It will be replaced by something else in short enough order, whether that happens or not. It's the natural order of the interwebs.

            • pretty easy to make the case Twitter's censorship has been bad for America and the world. We arguably have president Biden thanks to their spiking the Hunter Biden laptop story. Which has given us insane inflation, an economic meltdown in the pipe, and a potential direct conflict with Russia.

              Overall I would have to say different censorship would be hard pressed to be worse.

              But then again I actually try to think about these things rather than be other people's sock puppet for free.

              this statement implies that twitter's censorship is responsible for inflation ,not the pnademinc stoppng goods transports cold and closing businesses since employees had to stay home? And twitter's censorship can take some blame for the current russia environment, not trump who gets millions in loans from russia every time he goes bankrupt? and the fact that trump went to russia while he was campaigning and european members of the press reported that he was discussing a possible invasion of ukraine? putin t

              • Speaking of misinformation...

              • this statement implies that twitter's censorship is responsible for inflation ,not the pnademinc stoppng goods transports cold and closing businesses since employees had to stay home?

                It's not either of those things, at least it's mostly not the pandemic. 60% of the inflation is corporations raising prices and then blaming it on the pandemic while collecting record profits. Until we get on the same page about this we cannot even begin to have a rational response.

                • the shelves are thin, ships are backed up waiting to unload, gas is up 30% at least. either the corporations are faking the transportation failure world wide and it's like you say, a year for record profits, or this shit is as real as it has ever been. it built up with the end points the retail for example not able to receive due to under staffing then bigger and bigger suppliers started to lose productivity due to under staffing then endpoints started seeing continued drop offs because of it...

            • What a great example of a person who has been reduced to being an NPC.

              Could you explain what this means?

              • A bot, a person who can't think for themselves. A Non-Player Character.

              • It means he has spent so much time playing video games that the world looks like one big simulation, and therefore he can treat everyone like they're made out of pixels. It's a cheap means of dehumanization for the purpose of soothing one's conscience.

      • Perhaps in the short term.

        In the long term though, Musk seems to think Twitter should be less moderated. Since Twitter relies on advertising revenue to pay those shareholders, then the long term prospects are pretty bad. Most advertisers will leave if Twitter evolves into a Web 2.0 version of 4chan, and all you'll be left with is I guess Tesla ads and NFT / cryptocurrency scams.

  • The minute I heard musk was buying up a stake, I was immediately reminded of T Boone Pickens bid for Koito back in the 80's
    https://www.latimes.com/archiv... [latimes.com]

    Musk has done a better job of picking targets. He's shooting at silicon valley and the weakest sister of big tech. No matter how this comes out he wins. He either gets Twitter which is actually the worst outcome for him or he makes an enormous profit from the white knight outbidding him.

    Antagonizing the board into fighting him is just part of the plan.

    • Oh the things you can do when u have $200 Billion to play with

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tom ( 822 )

      Similar to what I've been thinking.

      I'm just not enough into Twitter to understand what happene in Oct/Nov to cause the stock price to plummet like this. It's still fairly low. I'm seriously considering throwing some play money at it to make a quick buck. Off Musk or off whoever tries to fight him off, I don't much care. I mean, it's still lower than the buyout offered.

      Unfortunately, the tax system here punishes short-term investments and I'd lose like 40% of any profit to the tax office, and that changes th

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