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When Elon Musk declared on 4 April that he had become the biggest single shareholder in Twitter there was much head scratching as to why the Tesla chief executive had taken his 9.2% stake.
Some commentators assumed he was just having a bit of fun.
A few days earlier, he had run a Twitter poll, in which he asked his 81.6 million followers: “Free speech is essential to a functioning democracy. Do you believe Twitter rigorously adheres to this principle?”
He later followed this by saying: “The consequences of this poll will be important. Please vote carefully.”
More than 2 million people voted and seven in 10 of them answered ‘no’.
That statement has led most commentators to assume he had already taken his stake at that point.
The poll and the timing of the announcement led some in the market to think that Mr Musk, who tends to have a libertarian – some say absolutist – view of the world when it comes to free speech, merely wanted to put pressure on the Twitter board.
But other commentators assumed the mercurial Mr Musk’s motivation ran deeper than that.
Dan Ives, an experienced tech sector analyst at broker Wedbush Securities, told clients that day: “Given Musk’s long standing critical view of Twitter and social media platforms, it was viewed that Musk could look to build a new social media platform to compete with Twitter and others.
“Instead it looks like Elon has his eyes laser set on Twitter and we would expect this passive stake as just the start of broader conversations with the Twitter board/management that could ultimately lead to an active stake and a potential more aggressive ownership role of Twitter.”
He was right. The following day, Twitter appointed Mr Musk to its board.
There then followed an embarrassing 72 hours in which Mr Musk…
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Source : skynews
