The long story between Twitter and Elon Musk

Elon Musk announced and outlined to investors potential cuts in Twitter’s workforce, predicting reductions of 75%: 7500 are the current employees, which, then, according to mathematical estimates, would be reduced to about 2000, excluding, however, layoffs, as reported in an e-mail by Twitter attorney Sean Edgett.

JUST IN: Elon Musk plans to get rid of 75% of Twitter’s 7,500 employees, Washington Post reports.

— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) October 20, 2022

As reported by the Washington Post, this cut would still be expected even if Musk does not take over Twitter. In terms of budget, a drastic reduction in employees’ paychecks for $800 million is expected in any case.

Musk is expected to close the deal with Twitter, according to the Delaware court, by Friday, October 28.

“For Musk, the easy part is to buy Twitter, the hard part is to fix its problems-it will take a Herculean effort,”

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives told The Washington Post. 

Twitter and Elon Musk: a long negotiation

Elon Musk, in early October, sent a letter to Twitter expressing his willingness to buy the company for an amount equal to what he had offered last April before he later backed out. 

Bloomberg has since officially confirmed the sending of this letter, news confirmed in turn by a Twitter spokesperson in a statement saying that in the letter, Musk offered $54.20 a share, for a total of $44 billion, roughly what he had proposed last April when Musk bought 10% of Twitter’s shares and became its majority shareholder.

When Musk changed his mind, Twitter took legal action, suing him and setting up a process to determine whether the entrepreneur would be able to withdraw from the contract simply for a penalty or instead be forced to purchase Twitter. 

Twitter’s board of directors accepted Musk’s offer in April. The latter, however, wanted to give it up if Twitter did not respond to accusations of lack of transparency on fake accounts.

Twitter had replied to Musk that it could not share data outside the company itself.

That was perhaps a controversy constructed by Elon Musk to avoid paying penalties for not agreeing. In fact, last July, then Musk declared that he would not buy the company.

A decision, perhaps, was made because of the collapse of the financial market for tech companies, and Musk’s offer was perhaps too high for a declining market.

Twitter sued Musk last July, and a Delaware court approved a five-day trial starting October 17.

Twitter and the takeover trial

Twitter’s position in the run-up to the trial seemed to have the wind in its sails, given Musk’s statements, and Elon’s change of heart should probably be attributed to that as well.

Musk has been clashing with Twitter for months and months, objecting to the company’s management and the platform’s poor functioning, especially concerning content moderation, which Musk thinks should be less strict, and also about the management of user profiles in terms of fake accounts.

The value of the company’s stock in early October fell and rose in a remarkably jumpy manner precisely because of his statements, as initially, the possibility of its takeover was strong, and then suddenly, there was backtracking.

But the manner of Musk’s new commitment, and the fact that there is an official letter from his lawyers, make the process of Twitter’s takeover seem almost certain. However, all the newspapers are proceeding in reporting the events with great caution, given Elon Musk’s sudden change of heart about the social network Twitter.