Twitter

[Patrick Thistle]

Ha, did Twitter take over then shut down Vine? The fucking fannies.

Yes they deliberately killed it in a fit of jealousy.

[Incandenza]

Musk's lawyers have sent Twitter a letter saying they haven't provided enough data about bots/fake accounts in what seems like clear posturing as a way for him to back out of the deal.

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1533896507086077957

[ursus arctos]

Matt Levine had a typically solid analysis of this today.

Here is his conclusion

I mean, to be clear, it isn’t a good pretext. It is, for instance, very hard to imagine that Musk’s banks are clamoring for detailed information about spam accounts to line up their financing; Twitter has raised debt financing in the past with its existing bot disclosure. Nor is it clear what Musk’s “reasonable business purpose related to the consummation of the transactions” is. And because it is so clearly part of Musk’s broader trolling operation, it is hard to imagine him winning if this ends up in court: If he refuses to close because Twitter won’t humor his bot-fishing expedition, it seems unlikely that a Delaware court will side with him. But it does raise the risk for Twitter, which gives him a bit more leverage to try to renegotiate the price. It is all going to get so much dumber.

[San Bernardhinault]

"It's going to all get so much dumber" should always have be the tagline for both Twitter and Musk

[caja-dglh]

it is very nice of the World's Richest Man to test out exactly how watertight M&A law is.

The answer certainly being "a lot more so than Securities fraud laws"

[ursus arctos]

It must have been a very suboptimal week for the entire Skadden team.

I wonder how often they are getting paid.

[caja-dglh]

I imagine all the long-standing partners laughing like drains at the up-and-coming partner who rode on Elon's coat-tails.

[ursus arctos]

I'm not sure there is such a person.

Wilson Sonsini did a lot of the earlier work, including the IPO, and he has generally used California firms.

[caja-dglh]

Ouch. That hurts even harder on their client acquisition.

[Discordant Resonance]

He's giving up on his bid:

https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1545520748592242689

[caja-dglh]

This is about to get really fun.

[ursus arctos]

Not to mention lucrative for the lawyers

[Incandenza]

Hmm, so he can pull out sometimes.

[Discordant Resonance]

Not to mention lucrative for the lawyers

https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1545527486066352128

[caja-dglh]

OK, So for those not following along - this was inevitable.

Elon has been making moves to find a way to try and get out of the deal. The first was misrepresentation (5% bots) which he was told is virtually certain not to work. The next was to attack Twitter not meeting covenants (providing specific data on the bots) which is better but.... legally uncertain? Probably not as good as a coin flip for him?

The billion dollar break fee is not in play because he has repeatedly proven he has secured funding. His behavior has been that he has happily broken securities law plenty of times and now feels like he fancies a shot at merger law (or he doesn't know and doesn't care).

My bet is that he gets forced to close. Twitter has to pursue this, because until Elon their stock traded in tandem with Snapchat, and Snapchat now trades at $15. Sure the lawyers will get paid, but I expect (and really hope) that this plays out really badly for him. Mostly because being rich enough to try and bend the law marks you out as an awful person.

It is about a $30bn decision between Elon and the public stock holders. This is going to be golden.

[Various Artist]

Hmm, so he can pull out sometimes.

Oh my.

*applause*

[caja-dglh]

The amount of people who are of the mindset that Elon will be fine out of all this is remarkable.

The dude committed to buy something for $44bn and is now trying to worm out on technicalities no one has had the gall to even test. It is proper doomsday shit that folk think this isn’t a done deal and he has bought the shit website he committed to.

[caja-dglh]

As I think on this, it is almost a perfect ending.

Twitter, widely recognized as the website with the most potential that achieved the least, ends by forcing a guy to buy it that no longer wants to.

poetic stuff.

[Satchmo Distel]

Will its archive be preserved or disappear down the Memory Hole. There's obviously stuff of historical interest there, as well of evidence of past statements by puic figures who've since done U-turns.

[caja-dglh]

It will be archived. as will this whole nonsense, if only for having to make Matt Levine write a Saturday newsletter.

[Hot Pepsi]

Why do we think it’s going out of business?

[caja-dglh]

Not sure on Satchmo’s thoughts - if Elon is forced to put $30bn+ large into twitter I doubt he is going to turn it off. This is absolutely my preferred outcome. I expect I will be doing a year or so of Thriller popocorn gifs on the way.

[caja-dglh]

$30bn is Elon’s non financed commitment, by the way. Banks are on for more, but he is on the hook for thirty billion dollars for basically arsing around while a bit delirious on being the richest man on earth and probably stoned. This whole thing will be a story for the ages. He is pretty much raising when Armand Hammer bought Arm & Hammer for vanity nonsense.

[Hot Pepsi]

I don’t really understand how he’s the richest man on earth. He didn’t invent Tesla’s technology and they didn’t invent the electric car. It’s not even clear they have the best version of it.

[ad hoc]

Isn't it something to do with PayPal?