(ORDO NEWS) — Twitter has agreed to sell itself to Elon Musk in a deal worth about $44 billion, the company said on Monday.
Earlier, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX became one of the largest shareholders of Twitter, where he was offered a seat on the board of directors and offered to buy the company.
The deal came after Musk revealed last week that he had raised $46.5 billion to fund the acquisition of the company. The Twitter board of directors later met on Sunday to evaluate Musk’s proposal.
Musk tweeted, “I hope even my worst critics stay on Twitter because that’s what freedom of speech means.”
The deal will put the richest man in the world in charge of one of the most influential social networks in the world. Elon Musk now has a 9 percent stake in Twitter and a seat on the corporate board of directors.
“I invested in Twitter because I believe in its potential to become a platform for free speech around the world,” Musk said on Twitter.
“However, having made my investment, I now understand that the company will neither prosper nor serve this public imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to transform as a private company.”
Earlier, Twitter’s board put in place a so-called poison pill that would make it harder for Musk to acquire the company without board approval. There were also questions about whether the company would try to find another buyer.
However, CFRA Senior Analyst Angelo Zino said that the Twitter board considering Musk’s proposal may have realized the situation with declining prices for US social media assets, so they accepted Elon Musk’s proposal.
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