Twitter Board Mulls Over Elon Musk’s $46.5 Billion Purchase Offer in Sunday Meeting

 

Elon Musk’s attempt to buy Twitter is not dead in the water. In fact, the social networking service’s board met Sunday morning to weigh the option to accept his unsolicited $46.5 billion offer, according to The New York Times sources.

Financing of Musk’s bid of $54.20 a share, the sources said, was “a turning point” that enabled the 11 board members to “seriously consider his offer.”

The NY Times sources, who asked to remain anonymous, said the board planned to meet with Musk later in the day to discuss “other contours around a potential deal,” which included a timeline to close a deal and fees that would be paid “if an agreement was signed and then fell apart.” It is unclear at the moment if that meeting took place.

The Tesla and SpaceX founder announced Thursday that he was putting together $46.5 billion in funds to buy Twitter, and was considering a tender offer to shareholders if the board rejected his offer. It is also $3.5 billion more than the $43 billion of his publicized offer, though it was not immediately clear whether that represented a higher price-point offer or just buys Musk additional negotiating wiggle-room.

Those details were released in a Thursday filing with the SEC, showing the $46.5 billion was backed by debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays and several banks agreeing to lend Musk an aggregate of $25.5 billion, according to the filing. Musk will cover the rest of the $21 billion via equity financing.

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment.

Twitter’s board last Friday approved plans to employ a poison pill defense to fight Musk’s takeover of the company. Any shareholder could choose to take the offer; if a majority (plus Musk’s outstanding shares, just over 9%) were to agree, he could take control — though Twitter’s recently enacted “poison pill” conditions could upend that process.

“The Rights Plan is intended to enable all shareholders to realize the full value of their investment in Twitter. The Rights Plan will reduce the likelihood that any entity, person or group gains control of Twitter through open market accumulation without paying all shareholders an appropriate control premium or without providing the Board sufficient time to make informed judgments and take actions that are in the best interests of shareholders,” the company said in its statement.