"I propose to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash," the Tesla boss said in a letter to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor and published in a handout. Wednesday to the American stock market policeman, the SEC.

The billionaire's proposed price would value Twitter at $43.4 billion, up from about $37 billion today.

According to Forbes, Mr. Musk's personal fortune is nearly $274 billion, making him the richest man in the world.

This proposal, specifies the leader of South African origin, is "his best offer and his final offer".

In case of refusal, he threatens to "re-examine his position as a shareholder" within the microblogging site.

Twitter's stock rose nearly 7% to $48.88 in electronic trading prior to the opening of Wall Street.

"Examine carefully"

Twitter confirmed in a statement that it had received "Elon Musk's unsolicited, non-binding offer to acquire all of the company's outstanding common shares for $54.20 in cash."

"Twitter's Board of Directors will carefully review the offer to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interests of the company and all Twitter shareholders," the group added.

Very active on the blue bird social network where he has nearly 82 million subscribers, Mr. Musk made a remarkable entry into the capital of the company at the beginning of last week by acquiring 73.5 million shares. ordinary of the Californian group, which placed it at the head of the largest shareholders of Twitter.

He then multiplied the tweets to suggest modifications or additions that he would like to see appear on the social network, in particular an "edit" button or the removal of advertisements, Twitter's main source of income.

Another battleground of the leader: freedom of expression, which he considers threatened by the overly strict moderation of content on the site.

In his letter to Mr. Taylor, Elon Musk claims to have invested in the platform because of the major role it plays in favor of "freedom of expression across the planet" which is, according to him, "a societal imperative of 'a functional democracy'.

"However, since I made my investment, I realized that the business would not thrive and serve its societal imperative in its current form," he said.

"Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it," he promised.

"hostile takeover"

The boss of Tesla and SpaceX was also to join the board of directors of Twitter, but the group's chief executive Parag Agrawal announced Monday that Mr. Musk had ended up giving up his seat.

According to several observers, this choice gave him greater leeway to implement his projects for Twitter.

"We are not surprised by Mr. Musk's plan to fully acquire the company after he rejected an offer to join the board, which would have handcuffed him," said CFRA's Angelo Zino.

According to the analyst, the billionaire is also not "the type of person who was going to sell his shares and walk away. Mr. Musk thinks he will be more effective in causing change within Twitter and making of the platform the standard-bearer of freedom of expression".

The influence and pressure exerted by Mr. Musk does not leave Twitter executives with many options, say Dan Ives, Ygal Arounian and John Katsingris of Wedbush Securities.

“We believe this twisty soap opera will end with Mr. Musk acquiring Twitter after this hostile takeover of the company,” the analysts predict in a note.

“It will be difficult for any other bidder or consortium to emerge and the board of directors will probably be forced to accept this offer or take active steps to sell Twitter,” they add.

© 2022 AFP