Elon Musk has made good on his promise to buy Twitter, paying A$61.3 billion to take the 16-year-old social networking company private.
Investors will receive A$75.47 a share, the company announced overnight, a 38 per cent jump from the share price as of April 1, the day before Musk announced his 9.2 per cent stake in the company and made his ownership ambition clear.
Since then, Musk has moved quickly, courting then rejecting a position on the Twitter board, before lobbing a takeover bid on April 14.
Musk has made his plans for the platform quite clear. He wants to rid the service of bods, centre the platform around free speech, and even floated a radical idea to make the San Francisco campus a homeless shelter.
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement.
“Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it.”
CEO Parag Agrawal sent an email to Twitter employees as the news was breaking. “I know this is a significant change and you’re likely processing what this means for you and Twitter’s future,” he wrote, scheduling an all-company meeting for later that day.
The deal was unanimously approved by the Twitter board, and is expected to be completed later this year.
Twitter shares leaped another 5.7 per cent to close at US$51.70 at the market close in New York.
