Elon Musk Launches $43-Billion Hostile Takeover of Twitter

Elon Musk has made a “best and final” offer to buy Twitter, saying the company has extraordinary potential and he will unlock it.

The world's richest man will pay $54.20 (roughly Rs. 4,120) per share in cash, representing a 54 percent premium over the January 28. closing price and a value of about $43 billion (roughly Rs. 327421.35 crore). The social media company's shares soared 18 percent.

Musk, 50, announced the offer in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The billionaire, who also controls Tesla, first disclosed a stake of about 9 percent on April 4.

The executive is one of Twitter's most-watched firebrands, often tweeting out memes and taunts to @elonmusk's more than 80 million followers. He has been outspoken about changes he'd like to consider imposing at the social media platform, and the company offered him a seat on the board following the announcement of his stake, which made him the largest individual shareholder.

After his stake became public, Musk immediately began appealing to fellow users about prospective moves, from turning Twitter's San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter and adding an edit button for tweets to granting automatic verification marks to premium users. One tweet suggested Twitter might be dying, given that several celebrities with high numbers of followers rarely tweet.

Musk can afford it. He's currently worth about $260 billion (roughly Rs. 19,21,486 crore) according to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index, compared with Twitter's market valuation of about $37 billion (roughly Rs. 281749.45 crore).

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