Twitter board's interest not aligned with shareholders, says Elon Musk

The economic interests of Twitter’s board are not aligned with shareholders, Elon Musk said Saturday after the social media company took steps to ward off his takeover attempt.

Musk was responding to a tweet about board members’ stock holdings, saying that with the departure of Jack Dorsey, the board “collectively owns almost no shares.” Twitter on Friday set up a shareholder rights plan that could thwart Musk’s hostile acquisition bid. 

The plan is exercisable if a party acquires 15 per cent of the stock without prior approval and seeks to ensure that anyone taking control of Twitter through open market accumulation pays all shareholders an appropriate control premium.

 Responding to a  tweet by a user about whether the so-called poison pill plan could amount to “criminal negligence,” Musk said the plan could be “more of a concern about other potential bidders” instead of “just” him. (Bloomberg)

Judge rules Musk’s 2018 tweets over taking Tesla private were false, claim investors (Reuters)

A federal judge has ruled that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s 2018 tweets about having secured financing to take the company private were false, according to court filings by Tesla investors suing the billionaire over the tweets. 

The filing said that the court ruled April 1 that Musk's 2018 tweets were “false and misleading.” The court “held that he recklessly made the statements with knowledge as to their falsity,” it said.

 Investors asked in the filing, submitted on Friday, for U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen to block the celebrity entrepreneur from his “public campaign to present a contradictory and false narrative regarding” his 2018 tweets.

 Musk on Thursday claimed that funding actually had been secured to take Tesla private in 2018. He settled with US securities regulators over what the agency found to be false, paying fines and agreeing to have a lawyer approve some of his tweets before posting them.