{"id":2500,"date":"2022-04-14T21:02:45","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T01:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/?p=2500"},"modified":"2022-06-17T12:22:29","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T16:22:29","slug":"friday-april-15-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/?p=2500","title":{"rendered":"Friday June 17, 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/technology\/\">TECH<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Elon Musk says he\u2019s \u2018not sure\u2019 he\u2019ll be able to buy Twitter after $43 billion bid, teases a plan B<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged Thursday he is \u201cnot sure\u201d he\u2019ll actually be able to buy Twitter, hours after he made an offer to acquire the company.<\/li><li>Asked by TED\u2019s Chris Anderson if there was a \u201cPlan B\u201d if his current offer were rejected, Musk said, \u201cthere is&#8221;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Billionaire&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/TSLA\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Tesla<\/a>&nbsp;CEO Elon Musk acknowledged Thursday at the TED2022 conference in Vancouver that he is \u201cnot sure\u201d he\u2019ll actually be able to buy&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/quotes\/TWTR\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Twitter<\/a>. The comments came hours after a regulatory filing revealed that he offered to acquire the company for $54.20 per share, or about $43 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Twitter confirmed it had received the bid but its board must still review the offer,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2022\/04\/14\/musk-may-need-to-pay-more-for-twitter-than-hes-willing-to-gordon-haskett-says.html\">which values shares much lower than the $70 they reached last summer<\/a>. But Musk had said the offer would be his \u201cbest and final\u201d one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Later on Thursday, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/4\/14\/23025903\/twitter-ceo-board-elon-musk-takeover-still-evaluating\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">reportedly<\/a>&nbsp;told employees in a staff meeting that the company is evaluating the offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Asked by TED\u2019s Chris Anderson if there was a \u201cPlan B\u201d if his current offer were rejected, Musk said, \u201cthere is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He declined to elaborate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite his vast wealth, much of Musk\u2019s assets are not liquid, leaving some analysts to wonder how he would provide the funds if his bid were accepted. Wells Fargo analysts, for example, said Thursday that&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2022\/04\/14\/tesla-shares-dip-after-ceo-elon-musk-makes-bid-to-buy-twitter.html\">Musk may have to sell Tesla shares to fund the takeover<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Anderson asked if Musk had \u201cfunding secured,\u201d alluding to Musk\u2019s infamous tweet when he said he would take Tesla private, which later got him into hot water with the Securities and Exchange Commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI have sufficient assets,\u201d Musk said. \u201cI can do it if possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Musk added in reference to the earlier Tesla take private tweet, \u201cfunding was actually secured\u201d and explained why he does not \u201chave respect for the SEC in that situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He went as far as to call some at the agency, \u201cthose bastards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2018\/09\/27\/tesla-falls-4percent-on-report-elon-musk-sued-by-sec.html\">In September 2018, the SEC charged Musk<\/a>&nbsp;with making \u201cfalse and misleading\u201d statements to investors when he announced via Twitter in August that year he was considering taking Tesla private at $420 a share and had funding secured. Musk and Tesla eventually&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/news\/press-release\/2018-226\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">agreed to a settlement with the government<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/04\/26\/business\/elon-musk-tesla-sec.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">revised it in 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under its terms, Musk and Tesla each had to pay $20 million in fines to the SEC, and Musk had to temporarily relinquish his role as chairman of the company\u2019s board.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In June 2020, the SEC said Musk&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2021\/06\/01\/sec-said-elon-musk-tesla-tweets-violated-settlement-agreement-per-wsj.html\">was in violation<\/a>&nbsp;of some terms of the agreement that required the CEO to have tweets preapproved if they contained material business information about Tesla likely to affect the share price. Musk had tweeted that Tesla\u2019s stock price was too high, which sent the shares down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The SEC is currently investigating Musk over his use of Twitter in conjunction with the timing of his trades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t mean to blame everyone at the SEC but certainly the San Francisco office,\u201d Musk said, discussing the controversy over the take private tweet. \u201cIt was because the SEC knew that funding was secured but they pursued an active, public investigation nonetheless. At the time, Tesla was in a precarious financial situation and I was told by the banks that if I did not agree to settle with the SEC that they would, the banks would cease providing working capital and Tesla would go bankrupt immediately. So that\u2019s like having a gun to your child\u2019s head. So I was forced to concede to the SEC unlawfully, those bastards.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The SEC declined to comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a><\/a>Musk\u2019s vision for Twitter<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Musk also laid out his vision for Twitter should he be successful in gaining control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech,\u201d he said, likening Twitter to a \u201cde facto town square.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He acknowledged a need for some level of content moderation, like around explicit calls to violence, and said the service would have to comply with the laws of the countries in which it operates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But, he said, he\u2019d like to see the platform\u2019s policies and algorithm be much more open and accessible so that people can critique it and raise concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said that if a tweet was altered in some way there should be information attached to it explaining why. Twitter does already attach links to its policies when it removes or labels a post that violates its guidelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Generally, Musk said \u201ctime-outs\u201d are preferable to permanent bans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said another top priority would be ridding the platform of \u201cspam and scam bots.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TECH Elon Musk says he\u2019s \u2018not sure\u2019 he\u2019ll be able to buy Twitter after $43 billion bid, teases a plan B Billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk acknowledged Thursday he is \u201cnot sure\u201d he\u2019ll actually be able to buy Twitter, hours after he made an offer to acquire the company.Asked by TED\u2019s Chris Anderson if there [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daily-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2500"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2509,"href":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2500\/revisions\/2509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/liferep.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}