Posted on 04/04/2022 9:24:59 PM PDT by conservative98
Thanks to Elon Musk, the Big Tech monopoly may be ending
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
It seems positive but don’t get too hopeful. People can let you down and he might just be looking at it as an investment.
Ted Turner exercised voting power in a different era.
Blackrock and Vanguard together own more shares than Elon. The top four institutional shareholders control more than 20% of the shares of Twitter. Institutions such as Blackrock and Vanguard, control trillions of dollars of retirement funds as well as mutual fund and ETFs owned by mom and pop investors. The institutions were once passive investors, generally supporting managements, but today have become more and more activist in policy, at corporations the institutions invest in, as woke executives have taken over decision making roles in the institutions. Our retirement money, invested in Blackrock, Vanguard, Fidelity, and other mutual funds is being used by the big institutions to force climate change and social justice agendas at the corporations where the mutual funds and ETF’s have voting control.
The institutions also have great influence on the Wall Street banks which Elon relies on for investment capital. If Elon, at 10% control, pushes an agenda Blackrock and Vanguard oppose, they have the votes to block him every time. If the “too large to fail” banks don’t like what he is doing, they can turn off funds to his companies.
Elon may have the paper wealth to buy 42% of Twitter but to get the billions in cash he would have to liquidate his own personal stock investments, or borrow from Wall Street banks. Either way the institutions own the shares he would have to buy to gain control. Selling shares of his own companies, to raise cash, would reduce his control of his own companies.
To acquire 42% of the company a tender offer will be needed. The institutions will determine the price he pays to get his hands on the controlling shares and the price will be substantially more than he paid for the first 10%.
Is Twitter that important to Elon Musk? Could it be this is a simply a short term investment where he makes some noise and gets bought out at a handsome profit?
You have obviously not been paying attention to anything. You don't know what you are talking about. Musk doesn't really need to make another few hundred millions.
I never mentioned anything about needing. I just said that’s how he tends to go about things. Really, for such such a straightforward answer you’re being a little obtuse. And if we accept the fact that I’m wrong as a hypothetical, what’s Musk really up to? Enlighten me.
CC
Those are a lot of words. Watch what a guy who owns 9% of a company can do.
Blackrock and Vanguard have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. Musk just made them 26%. Let’s see them vote against that.
Like I said, he’s the 2nd best troll in the world behind Trump with 100x the money.
Who knows what he wants to do, but he seems hell bent on upsetting the apple cart.
Maybe he’s not one of us, but he most certainly isn’t one of them.
Nope. That's NOT how he operates. He's never been a day trader kind of guy.
Really, for such such a straightforward answer you're being a little obtuse. And if we accept the fact that I'm wrong as a hypothetical, what's Musk really up to? Enlighten me.
Read this thread from me from a week ago:
Is Elon Musk Building A New Social Media Platform? His Tweet Sparks Buzz
Musk's tweet comes a day after he put out a Twitter poll asking users if they believed Twitter adheres to the principle of free speech, to which over 70% voted “no”. On Saturday, Musk, who is himself a prolific user of Twitter, critisied the social media platform and said the company is undermining democracy by failing to adhere to free speech principles.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4050061/posts
This is all about FREE SPEECH.
Actually, you bring up a good point. It’s a back door to screw with Blacrock and Vanguard. Maybe that’s what he wants...
“Twitter canceled the Babylon bee and that really
pissed off Elon.”
He was accumulating shares certainly before that went down.
Ted Turner didn’t give a crap about voting. He just stormed into meetings held by division bosses and said he owned 4% of the company and they couldn’t throw him out. He just terrorised them.
Actually super funny. Elon owns more than twice as much as an individual.
Back when US corporations actually served the needs of their stockholders all you had to do as the single biggest stockholder was "show the riding crop" to the Chairman of the Board, an they would more-or-less do your bidding. But now the princes of business are woke, and speak of "stake holders" as an excuse for not doing their fiduciary duties. My point is that Elon might have to actually take a scalp, or buy majority interest, in order to get the level of input he wants at Twitter. It all bears watching. Should be fun.
Totally agree. This will be super fun to watch. He owns 9% of twitter. Vanguard and Blackrock own 20%.
This is a throwdown.
He will break them and they won’t know what hit them.
He will bust them up…real good.
Apparently you did not read my post. I never said Elon borrowed money to buy the 10% of Twitter stock he now owns. I made no claims about how he funded that purchase. Thanks for providing information about his past stock sales which was irrelevant to the points I made about the financing issues associated with acquiring controlling ownership at some point in the future.
My point was he will have to raise cash through borrowing, or sales of stock, to buy another 42% of the company if he wants to gain controlling interest. If he wants to buy the other 42% he will have to deal with the banks and institutional investors who may have other agendas. At the current $30 billion market cap of Twitter he will need roughly $12.5 billion in cash to buy controlling interest at current price. However any attempt to buy that much stock, in a short period of time, will drive the price up considerably. The institutions owning the stock will determine the price at which they will sell, not the buyer trying to gain control.
My other point was 10% ownership of a corporation does not give an individual large shareholder the level of policy influence it once did because of the large blocks of shares owned by institutions which are becoming more activist in their voting.
If Elon votes his 10% to change the censorship policies at Twitter, the institutional shareholders who currently control over 50% of the vote, will prevail. They will either vote with the 10% shareholder or they won’t. At this point in time the institutional shareholders seem to be fully supportive of management policies since the board of directors recently installed a new CEO who fully supports censorship.
Read the post and try to comprehend what was said. Then argue the actual points made, not something you inferred.
As to me being an oppressive leftist troll, I encourage you brush up on your reading comprehension skills by reviewing my comments on this forum over a number of years. If you still think I am an oppressive leftist troll the your definition of “oppressive leftist troll” is very different than mine.
From your post #23:
“The institutions also have great influence on the Wall Street banks which Elon relies on for investment capital. If Elon, at 10% control, pushes an agenda Blackrock and Vanguard oppose, they have the votes to block him every time. If the “too large to fail” banks don't like what he is doing, they can turn off funds to his companies.”
First of all neither SpaceX nor Tesla currently relies on Wall Street bankers for investment capital. And Musk actually rejected an over $1 Billion handout from the German government because he did not need it.:
Musk rejects government subsidies for planned Tesla battery plant in Germany
Every penny invested in SpaceX comes from Musk himself or from venture capital not Wall Street.
And SpaceX is already profitable.
Tesla is now one of the most profitable car companies on the planet, making a massive $2.3 Billion in net profits in in Q4 2021 alone, with cumulative cash reserves at approx $20 billion as of 4Q 2021.
And they just completed two new cutting edge gega factories in Texas and Berlin.
Don't much look like Wall Street can do too much blackmailing of Musk here does it?
Well the institutional shareholders are not investing their own money. They are investing shareholders money.
I'd remind you that Twitter has REALLY SUCKED as an investment in the last 4 year, making very little return to investors. In fact Musk's investment in Twitter, which sent the stock up 27% yesterday, is the best return they've had in years.
Institutional investors who follow far left political agendas and cost investors money, are going to find their investors walk out the door.
People put their pension funds in there to make political statements.
Here ya go:
Elon Musk to join Twitter's board of directors, teases ‘significant improvements’
CNBC ^ | April 5th, 2022 | Jessica Bursztynsky
Posted on 05/04/2022, 14:08:56 by shadowlands1960
- Elon Musk will join Twitter's board of directors after taking a 9.2% stake in the social media company, according to a release filed with the SEC.
- Shares were up more than 5% in premarket trading.
- “Through conversations with Elon in recent weeks, it became clear to us that he would bring great value to our Board,” CEO Parag Agrawal said in a tweet.
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