Elon Musk defines himself as a “free speech absolutist” who loves robust debate. So, in that spirit, let’s boldly state that the entrepreneur’s original approach to buy Twitter for $43bn and take the messaging company private was dumb.
Pitching a hostile, sketchy, unfunded, low-ball offer to Twitter’s board, while simultaneously describing US Securities and Exchange Commission regulators with whom he has had previous entanglement as “bastards”, certainly counts as unconventional. The move smacked more of a trolling exercise than a serious attempt to buy the company. The result was to incite Twitter’s board to launch a poison pill defence that would automatically dilute Musk’s shareholding if he bought more than 15 per cent.
But you do not become the world’s richest man by staying wrong for long. In short order Musk has pulled together a financing package — largely leveraged off his $260bn personal fortune — that may enable him to launch a more conventional tender offer to all Twitter’s shareholders soon. There is no doubt that the mercurial entrepreneur, who has created two of the world’s most remarkable companies in Tesla and SpaceX, could electrify the moribund Twitter with jolts of energy, wild-eyed imagination and hype. But the worrisome impression is that Musk appears largely uninterested in the area in which he could most help Twitter (rethinking its business model) and primarily interested in an area where he might do harm (scrapping content moderation).