Twitter defends itself: This is the poisoned pill with which it wants to stop Elon Musk's assault

Elon Musk

has offered almost 40,000 million euros in exchange for taking full control of the social network

, but although he is currently the richest man in the world, it is not clear that he will achieve it.

The tycoon acknowledged yesterday during a conference that his chances are not high, despite the fact that the offer is

of the company.

Twitter, in fact, fell on the stock market on the day of the announcement, a clear sign that Wall Street does not believe that the operation will go ahead.

The reason is that although the board of directors claims to be studying the offer, some Twitter shareholders have already made it clear that they will not sell.

"The amount does not come close to the intrinsic value of the platform," Prince

of Saudi Arabia, who has about 5% of the capital, said precisely on Twitter.

Twitter's counterattack has not been easy and the social network has already mobilized to defend itself against Musk's hostile offer.

This same Friday, it has announced the plan of its Board of Directors, which would allow current shareholders to buy additional bonds.

"The Rights Plan will reduce the likelihood that any entity, person or group will gain control of Twitter through open market accumulation without paying all shareholders an adequate control premium," Twitter said in a statement.

The formula is effective.

It is the strategy known as

This is the sale of shares at a discount to some of the existing shareholders, obviously excluding the party interested in acquiring the company (in this case, Musk).

This move would dilute Musk's existing stake and make it much more difficult to buy the company in a hostile way since he would have to pay a much higher amount for the rest.

The "poison pill" strategy is a common defense for companies in hostile takeover bids.

, for example, used it in 2012 to defend against the advance of activist investor

and the pizza chain

also implemented a similar strategy in 2018 to curb the advance of shareholder

Musk has said that if the board rejects the takeover offer, he could take legal action against the company.

"If the current board of Twitter takes action contrary to the interests of shareholders, they would be breaching their fiduciary duty. The responsibility they would assume would be on a titanic scale," he explained.

Elon Musk, who until recently was Twitter's largest individual shareholder with about 9.2% of the total shares, has also been advanced by the fund manager

, which has increased its stake to 10.3%.

Vanguard has not yet indicated whether it is interested in selling its stake to Musk, but it seems unlikely.

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