Twitter wants to block the buyout of its shares by billionaire Elon Musk

Twitter announced measures intended to prevent Elon Musk from acquiring his shares.

The "poison pill" clause will be activated if Musk persists, Twitter announces.

Here, the logo of the social network at the New York Stock Exchange.

AP - Richard Drew

Text by: RFI Follow

1 min

Will the hostile takeover launched by American billionaire Elon Musk on Twitter succeed?

The question has been on everyone's lips since the boss of Tesla decided to take control of the American social network with 450 million users.

On Friday night, Twitter showed that it was not going to let Musk attack without reacting.

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Twitter announced measures intended to prevent it from acquiring its shares.

The 'poison pill' clause will be triggered if Musk persists on Twitter announcement.

Financiers around the world know the expression, and regularly use the method.

The “poison pill” is a defensive weapon wielded by one company when attacked by another.

To try to prevent Elon Musk's hostile takeover bid to

that he does not yet own, the San Francisco company will make the operation much more expensive and much longer. .

Shareholders may not digest the pill

The principle of the "poison pill" consists in effect of offering friendly shareholders a slew of new shares at low prices, resalable at twice the price, in order to make the takeover by the enemy shareholder much more expensive.

Twitter will activate this measure if Musk exceeds 15% of the capital and it is currently at 9%.

Whether this defense will work remains to be seen.

Indeed, some shareholders may not digest the pill.

Because the creation of new shares automatically dilutes the price of the old ones and therefore harms the interests of savers who have invested their savings in the company.

They could challenge the measure in court.

Elon Musk, even if he has not announced anything yet, could very well be the first to round up his lawyers.

Even before the announcement by Twitter of the use of the "poison pill", Elon Musk announced that he had

, if the board of directors rejected his offer.  

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