Elon Musk bids $41 billion for Twitter

The Tesla founder has offered to buy the social media company outright.

Billionaire Elon Musk has made an offer to buy Twitter - which he took a nine per cent stake in just last week - for $41 billion.

The offer represents a 38 per cent premium over Twitter's share price as of 1st April - the last trading day before his nine per cent investment was announced.

Musk argues that Twitter needs to go private to make significant changes, rather than answering to shareholders. He rejected an offer to join Twitter's board earlier this week, which makes sense in light of this latest offer: taking a board seat would have limited his total stake in the company to just under 15 per cent.

In a letter to Twitter chairperson Bret Taylor, Musk said, "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.

"Since making my investment I now realise the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.

"My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder."

He added, "This is not a threat, [Twitter] is simply not a good investment without the changes that need to be made."

Computing says:

That didn't take long. Elon Musk's infamous ego has certainly landed at Twitter, and this has now become a hostile takeover. However, it's going to cost a not-insignificant amount of both time and money, even for a billionaire. Musk is unlikely to have anything like that amount of liquid wealth and will either need to take a loan or sell a chunk of Tesla stock to fund it.