April 25 (UPI) — SpaceX and Tesla founder Elon Musk and Twitter’s board of directors held talks to consider the billionaire’s most recent bid to buy the social platform in negotiations that lasted late Sunday into early Monday, according to reports.
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and CNN all reported the negotiations, which followed Musk’s offer last week of more than $46 billion to acquire the remaining Twitter shares that he doesn’t own.
The Twitter board has been conducting a “careful, comprehensive and deliberate review” of the offer, the reports said.
Musk said in a regulatory filing last week that he is attempting to acquire control of Twitter and made the offer of $46.5 billion for the company. He has said that the social platform is not living up to its potential as a communications giant.
Twitter initially seemed hesitant to sell to Musk, going so far as to initiate a “poison pill” maneuver to block such an acquisition. The Journal report suggested that Twitter’s board is now changing its position.
Musk, who’s already Twitter’s largest shareholder with a little more than 9% of its public shares, secured roughly $25 billion in loans from Morgan Stanley Senior Funding and other financial institutions, according to the regulatory filing. An equity financing commitment would cover the remaining $21 billion to buy Twitter.
Musk, 50, has long been a critic of Twitter policies and limitations and says that under his ownership would reach “extraordinary potential” as a private company. He began buying Twitter stock in large shares in January and had acquired 5% by March.
“If our twitter bid succeeds, we will defeat the spam bots or die trying!” he said in a tweet last Thursday.
Early Monday, shares of Twitter were trading for a little under $50 on the New York Stock Exchange, an increase of roughly 4%.
