Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for a tidy sum

Elon Musk has made a bid to buy Twitter for $43 billion and take it private, saying he thinks it needs to be “transformed”.

The soap opera of Elon Musk and Twitter is far from over. Telsa’s CEO has offered to acquire all the Twitter shares he doesn’t own for $54.20 per share, valuing the company at $43.4 billion.

Musk said the cash offer was his “best and last offer”according to the SEC filing, adding that if it was not accepted, he would have to reconsider his position as a shareholder.

“I invested in Twitter because I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the world, and I believe that free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy”he said in a letter he sent to Twitter.

“However, since making my investment, I now realize that the business will not thrive or serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be turned into a private company”he added.

The letter was addressed to Bret Taylor, the chairman of Twitter’s board of directors, not CEO Parag Agrawal, who assumed the role last fall.

“Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unblock it”, he concluded. Twitter issued a statement on Thursday confirming that it had received the offer. He said his board would carefully consider the proposal “to determine a course of action that it believes is in the best interests of the company and all Twitter shareholders”.

Last week, Musk revealed he had been buying shares of Twitter since late January and had amassed a 9.1% stake since then, spending $2.6 billion on the shares he bought.

After this disclosure, he first accepted an offer of a seat on the company’s board of directors, an agreement which provided for a ceiling of his investment in the company at a stake of 14.9%, before retracting and d cancel the agreement.