In a hostile takeover bid, Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter at $43 billion

Elon Musk has made a “best and final” offer to buy Twitter Inc., saying the company has extraordinary potential and he will unlock it.

The world’s richest man will pay $54.20 per share in cash, representing a 54 per cent premium over the Jan 28. closing price and a value of about $43 billion. The social media company’s shares soared 18 per cent.

Musk, 50, announced the offer in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The billionaire, who also controls Tesla Inc., first disclosed a stake of about 9 per cent on April 4.

The billionaire revealed in regulatory filings over recent weeks that he'd been buying shares in almost daily batches starting Jan. 31.

Only Vanguard Group's suite of mutual funds and ETFs controls more Twitter shares.

At that point Twitter quickly gave Musk a seat on its board on the condition that he not own more than 14.9 per cent of the company's outstanding stock, according to a filing. But Musk backed out of the deal.

Read | Elon Musk is sued by shareholders over delay in disclosing Twitter stake

The executive is one of Twitter’s most-watched firebrands, often tweeting out memes and taunts to @elonmusk’s more than 80 million followers.

Musk's Twitter followers make him one of the most popular figures on the platform, rivalling pop stars like Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga. But his prolific tweeting has sometimes gotten him into trouble with the SEC and others.

After his stake became public, Musk immediately began appealing to fellow users about prospective moves, from turning Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters into a homeless shelter and adding an edit button for tweets to granting automatic verification marks to premium users. One tweet suggested Twitter might be dying, given that several celebrities with high numbers of followers rarely tweet.

Musk can afford it. He’s currently worth about $260 billion according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, compared with Twitter’s market valuation of about $37 billion.

Musk and Tesla in 2018 agreed to pay $40 million in civil fines and for Musk to have his tweets approved by a corporate lawyer after he tweeted about having the money to take Tesla private at $420 per share.

That didn't happen but the tweet caused Tesla's stock price to jump. Musk's latest trouble with the SEC could be his delay in notifying regulators of his growing stake in Twitter.

Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has said he doesn't think Twitter is living up to free speech principles — an opinion shared by followers of Donald Trump and a number of other right-wing political figures who've had their accounts suspended for violating Twitter content rules.

Shares of Twitter jumped 11 per cent before the market open.

(With AP inputs)