Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur, tweeted on Saturday, “Love Me Tender,” just days after making a $43 billion cash buyout offer to Twitter Inc (TWTR.N).
“It would be totally indefensible not to bring this offer to a shareholder vote,” Musk tweeted after his TED lecture on Thursday, hinting at the potential of a hostile takeover in which he would bypass Twitter’s board and put the offer directly to its shareholders.
Musk, who owns a 9.1 percent stake in Twitter and is already the company’s second-largest stakeholder, tweeted over the weekend that the board’s “economic interests are simply not aligned with shareholders.”
According to persons familiar with the situation, Thoma Bravo, a technology-focused private equity group with more than $103 billion in assets under management as of the end of December, alerted Twitter that it was studying the prospect of putting together a proposal.