It’s money time for Elon Musk.
If summer has passed, autumn is off to a flying start for the richest man in the world.
The tech tycoon has important appointments at the end of September that could have a considerable impact on the empire he is building. These appointments can also affect the image of a revolutionary and visionary boss that he is building.
These appointments relate to two fronts: the abrupt withdrawal of his offer to acquire the social network Twitter (TWTR) for $44 billion and the promise to unveil an advanced humanoid robot to be marketed in 2023.
Deposition Ahead
Musk on Sept. 26 and 27 will be grilled by Twitter lawyers, who are asking the Delaware Court of Chancery to compel the entrepreneur to honor his initial commitment to acquire the platform.
The stakes are financial for Musk, who personally wanted to take control of the social network. If he loses, he would have to shell out $44 billion of his personal wealth, which is largely based on his Tesla (TSLA) shares. But Musk had managed to secure the support of partners before his abrupt withdrawal on July 8.
If Twitter loses, it is not excluded that the market value of the platform, which is a place where trendsetters and opinion makers gather, will suffer enormously because doubts about its profitability will undoubtedly resurface.
Musk’s excuse for withdrawing his bid is that the social network is lying about how many spam bots, or fake accounts, exist on the platform. However, advertisers take into account the number of users on a social network to determine whether they promote their products and services there.
Twitter has always said that fake accounts make up less than 5% of its users, but Musk says that number is closer to 20%. It should however be noted that the billionaire made the choice from the outset to make a bid without prior due diligence as is customary in mergers and acquisitions.
Twitter believes that Musk changed his mind when he saw the markets shaken by fears of recession. Basically, it’s all about the money or the price. Twitter shares are currently trading at $41.58, $13 less than the $54.20 per share offered by Musk on April 25 to acquire the entire company of which he had already been the largest shareholder since April 4 with a 9.1% stake.
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