The boss of Tesla and spaceflight company SpaceX, Elon Musk, has acquired 9.2% of Twitter’s stock market value and thus becomes its largest shareholder. The surprise announcement sent the stock up about 25% on Monday, just before markets opened in New York.
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According to a document filed with the SEC, the American stock exchange regulator, the richest man on the planet invested no less than 2.9 billion dollars to get his hands on 73.5 million shares of Twitter.
This makes him the largest shareholder in the group ahead of the investment fund Vanguard (8.8%) and the bank Morgan Stanley (8.4%), according to data from Bloomberg.
Elon Musk speaks very frequently on the platform, where he has just over 80 million subscribers.
His announcements on the tweet network frequently arouse controversy.
In the summer of 2018, he notably published a tweet where he claimed to have the appropriate funding to withdraw Tesla from the New York Stock Exchange, without providing proof.
After an unfortunate new publication in early 2019, he agreed to have his posts directly related to the electric vehicle maker’s business pre-cleared by the SEC.
The leader had also given up his position as chairman of the board of directors of Tesla.
At the beginning of March, however, Elon Musk asked a New York judge to cancel the agreement made with the stock market policeman over his tweets, claiming through his lawyer that the SEC was seeking to “harass Tesla and silence Mr. .Musk”.
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Freedom of expression
The billionaire boss is also critical of the measures put in place by Twitter to moderate certain content deemed inappropriate.
At the end of March, Elon Musk published two polls on the social network, one to ask his followers if they thought that the Twitter algorithm should be in open source code (“open source”), the other to know whether they felt the company respected freedom of expression.
Voters overwhelmingly answered “yes” to the first poll and “no” to the second.
“Given that Twitter acts as a de facto public square, its failure to adhere to the principles of free speech fundamentally undermines democracy,” the Tesla boss tweeted following the results.
“Is a new platform necessary?” he asked.
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Passive equity investment
In the document sent to the SEC (entitled “Schedule 13G”), Elon Musk specifies that his stake, less than 10% of the ordinary shares, is passive, that is to say that he does not count. influence the company’s major strategic decisions.
But this entry into the capital could be the prelude to a more active role within the company, believe some experts.
“We expect this passive participation to mark the beginning of deeper discussions with Twitter’s management and board, which may lead to active participation and potentially more aggressive ownership,” Dan said in a note. Ives of Westbush Securities.
Contacted by AFP, Twitter did not react immediately.