A poison pill is among the dumbest and least effective approaches, short and long term.
Musk is a genius and a friend of freedom.
The obvious Twitter move is to have an investor coalition led by Jack Dorsey (and a big chunk of his $15B net worth) outbid Musk by $0.10 per share. Musk has committed not to go higher (a mistake unless he is welcoming such an offer).
If not Dorsey, then Bloomberg, Bill Gates, MacKenzie Scott, Steve Schwarzman, Dan Gilbert, Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs’ widow.
It’s implausible to me that Apple or any other large corporation would be competitive in any kind of bidding contest, or that they would pass antitrust scrutiny.
It does not seem to me that Musk is intent on winning this. As I’ve written, his “BAFO” language invites competing bids. I’m also of the opinion that there are likely better ways for Musk to advance this crucially important cause than to own and control Twitter. I imagine him forcing Twitter to commit to better behavior, then selling into the winning bid, taking his $1.5B in winnings and putting them to some other use, such as starting up his own platform.
However this turns out, Musk I think wins and freedom of speech ends up substantially better off.
They could ‘buy him out’ by counter offering him a substantial profit, he walks away wealthier and they are left with 10% more stock in a dying company................
“..However this turns out, Musk I think wins and freedom of speech ends up substantially better off....”
Musk may have never really intended to buy em...unless he had to, but rather to “flush em out” which he has done regardless of how it goes down...buying em or not.
He definitely stirred the hornet’s nest and put fear into em... For that alone, I’ll give him an A+.
I’m with you. Musk didn’t just decide that he would “make them an offer they can’t refuse” with no thought about what they would do if they didn’t want to take the deal. He’s a businessman. He’s thought through a LOT of scenarios and how to handle them.
One simple example: He gets someone to exceed his bid and then he makes a killing on the sale of his share of the company. But there are many others.