Elon Musk didn't take long to turn his stake in Twitter into a takeover battle.

The currently richest person in the world, who is primarily known as CEO of the electric car manufacturer Tesla and the space company SpaceX, announced on Thursday that he wanted to buy the short message service completely.

He offers around 43 billion dollars.

Roland Lindner

Business correspondent in New York.

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In a letter to Twitter CEO Bret Taylor, he wrote that the online platform had to be delisted and restructured: “Twitter has extraordinary potential.

I'm going to release it.” Twitter's share price, which had risen significantly since Musk's investment was announced, rose another 3 percent in trading on Thursday to around $47.

Board of Directors discusses offer

However, it remained below the price of $54.20 offered by Musk, which indicates that there are serious doubts in the financial markets about the completion of the transaction.

Musk called the award his "best and final offer."

Twitter announced that it would "carefully" examine the "unsolicited" offer.

According to American media reports, the company's board of directors wanted to meet on Thursday to discuss Musk's purchase offer.

Less than two weeks ago, it was announced that Musk had bought a 9.2 percent stake in Twitter, making it the company's largest shareholder instantly.

From then on, events unfolded.

At first it was said that Musk should take a seat on Twitter's board of directors, but that was suddenly off the table earlier this week.

This immediately aroused speculation that Musk could launch a takeover maneuver, because that meant that an agreement concluded with him, according to which he, as a member of the board of directors, could not increase his stake to more than 14.9 percent, was no longer valid.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has already warned his employees about further "distractions" and "noise", and this has now been confirmed a few days later with the purchase offer.

“I have no confidence in the management”

Once again, Musk has now suggested that his motives on Twitter are more than financial.

He has repeatedly criticized the company recently, accusing it of excessive censorship of content, and he now reiterated this in his letter.

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

But since my investment, I have found that the company will not succeed in its current form and will not pursue this societal imperative.” Therefore, away from the stock market, Twitter must be “transformed”.

With his criticism, Musk strikes a similar tone as politicians in the US Republican Party, who accuse Twitter and other platforms such as Facebook of suppressing conservative voices.

This camp has also criticized the fact that the companies have excluded former President Donald Trump.

Should Musk actually become the owner of Twitter, the question would be whether he would push for Trump to be unbanned.

Musk combined his takeover bid with another dig at the leadership of CEO Agrawal.

"I have no faith in management," he wrote.

He also threatened to give up his investment if the takeover didn't go through.

He doesn't think he can initiate the necessary changes as long as Twitter is public.

However, he left it open which interventions he envisages.

Musk can afford takeover

Musk described the price he was offering at $54.20 per share as high and said shareholders "love it."

However, this is doubtful.

The offer corresponds to a not inconsiderable premium of 38 percent on the share price before his investment became public.

But the price was still quoted at the level of Musk's offer in November.

In this respect, the question arises as to whether the other Twitter shareholders would be satisfied with that.

Basically, Twitter is vulnerable to a takeover.

In contrast to some competitors, such as Facebook's parent company Meta, the company does not have shares with disproportionate voting rights that would give individual shareholders dominant influence and make takeovers more difficult.

The biggest Twitter shareholders behind Musk right now are institutional investors like Vanguard, Morgan Stanley, and Blackrock.

In principle, Musk can easily afford the acquisition.

The Bloomberg Billionaire Index puts his fortune at $259 billion.

That would mean putting himself under a considerable additional burden, and he already wears a number of different hats.

In addition to his duties as CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, he also founded the Boring Company, which specializes in tunnels and transport systems.