Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, has built a fortune firmly anchored in 21st century technology, with a family of firms ranging from electric vehicles to private rocket ships. Musk, with an all-cash $43 billion offer to purchase Twitter Inc., may soon follow in the footsteps of former tycoons by controlling a media platform that aided his rise to stardom.
In a regulatory document made public on Thursday, Musk, the CEO of Tesla, detailed the takeover attempt in a regulatory document and stated that he would take Twitter private.
Owning Twitter would be the next step in the growth of a divisive figure. By combining the free-flowing obsessions of aerospace visionary Howard Hughes with an intense focus on revolutionising auto production reminiscent of Henry Ford, Musk has created a new model of a billionaire who is as likely to take on short-sellers as he is to shoot a red luxury sports car into orbit, as he did in 2018.
Regardless of your sentiments about Musk, he would undoubtedly shake things up, with the only issue being whether he would make things worse or better, said Michael Hewson, chief market analyst at CMC Markets.
Musk, 50, has a $273.6 billion fortune, according to Forbes, making him the world’s wealthiest person, worth $92.3 billion more than runner-up Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com Inc. Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, to a Canadian mother and a South African father, and went on to graduate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997.
He did not create rockets or electric vehicles, nor did he start Tesla, which he has overseen since 2008. It wasn’t until he said that Tesla’s electric cars should be high-performance machines with smartphone-style software that the global auto industry changed. This led established businesses to scramble to keep up with new, all-electric competitors like Rivian.
While many anticipated Tesla would collapse – as it almost did during the 2008-2009 financial crisis and again in 2017-2018 when it struggled through “manufacturing hell” with the launch of its high-volume Model 3 vehicle – the business began producing quarterly profits in 2020.
Wall Street has recognised Tesla’s accomplishment by increasing the company’s market capitalization to more than $1 trillion—more than the combined market capitalization of all three Detroit automakers and Toyota Motor Corp.—and elevating it to the fourth-largest company in the benchmark S&P 500 index, which serves as the foundation of millions of Americans’ retirement savings plans.
At the same time, his business, SpaceX, overseen by President Gwynne Shotwell on a daily basis, has upended incumbents in the space launch sector by building rockets capable of launching satellites into space and returning to Earth for re-use.
Maybe more than anyone else, Musk has aided in the mainstreaming of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, with Tesla holding nearly $2 billion in bitcoin on its financial sheet and the firm being one of the few to accept dogecoin as payment.
Musk has left a trail of subordinates who either couldn’t keep up with him or were fed up with his never-ending demands. Even his most ardent supporters looked to be losing patience with him at times. Cathie Wood, a well-known stock picker, said at a conference on Tuesday that she doesn’t like Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s “antics” and has little personal contact with him. Her ARK Innovation ETF had the best return of any U.S. fund in 2020.
Musk has been chastised by labour activists for his antipathy towards unions. Musk has also fought with former business colleagues, state and federal authorities, and Wall Street players such as Kynikos Associates short seller Jim Chanos. He told Chanos that he was wrong to say that Musk’s output predictions for Tesla and his tunnelling company, The Boring Company, were unrealistic.
What irritates me is not so much the personal details and personal insults. That’s something I’m used to. To be nice, it’s his readiness to say things that I believe he understands are a stretch. ” In 2018, Chanos told CNBC.
Musk has also taken aim at Reuters, writing in 2018 that a reporter misled the public about Model 3 manufacturing and “followed that up with a bad tweet to me” on his birthday.
Thanks to Twitter, Elon Musk has become a household name. He has 81 million followers on Instagram and is well-known enough in the US to be the show’s host on “Saturday Night Live” in 2021.
A Twitter acquisition would add Musk to a long line of American corporate tycoons who built their riches with media holdings, from William Randolph Hearst in the late 1800s through Jack Welch’s 1986 decision to acquire the parent company of broadcast network NBC when he was CEO of General Electric.
Musk has used Twitter to target both major and minor short sellers. He’s also shared everything from dad jokes to polls on what he should do with his unrealized profits from Tesla’s stock price rise.
His tweets have been the subject of a legal struggle with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States. Musk is bound by a 2018 agreement with the government that requires him to get pre-approval on some Twitter posts after tweeting that he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private. The SEC claimed Musk cheated investors, but the settlement included no acknowledgment or suggestion of innocence by Musk. Since then, Musk has accused the SEC of “unrelenting harassment.”
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said, “Twitter has been linked with Musk’s worldwide reach, which is why he feels so strongly about the site.” However, for the Twitter board, this is a living nightmare since they must find another bidder unless they want to eat litigation for breakfast.
