By Matt O'Brien
Twitter said Friday that its board of directors has unanimously adopted a “poison pill” defense in response to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s proposal to buy the company and take it private.
Twitter said the move, formally called a “limited duration shareholder rights plan," aims to enable its investors to “realize the full value of their investment” by reducing the likelihood that any one person can gain control of the company without either paying shareholders a premium or giving the board more time. Poison pills are often used to defend against hostile takeovers.
Twitter’s plan would take effect if Musk’s roughly 9% stake grows to 15% or more. Even then, Musk could still take over the company with a proxy fight by voting out the current directors. Twitter said the plan doesn’t prevent the board from engaging with parties or accepting an acquisition proposal if it’s in the company’s “best interests.”
Twitter had revealed in a securities filing Thursday that Musk offered to buy the company outright for more than $43 billion, saying the social media platform “needs to be transformed as a private company” in order to build trust with its users.
“I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy,” Musk said in the filing. “I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form.”
Later on Thursday, during an onstage interview at the TED 2022 conference, he went even broader: “Having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.”
SAG-AFTRA said over the weekend that it received the studios' last best and final offer following a meeting on Saturday, with the union saying it's reviewing it and considering a response "within the context of the critical issues addressed in our proposals."
Stocks rose slightly as Wall Street looks to continue its momentum with earnings season winding down.
Tyson Foods is recalling about 30,000 of its dino-shaped chicken nuggets after some consumers reported finding small metal pieces in those nuggets.
Google on Monday will try to protect a lucrative piece of its internet empire at the same time it’s still entangled in the biggest U.S. antitrust trial in a quarter century.
Before the SAG-AFTRA strike, this was the weekend “Dune: Part Two” was supposed to open. When Warner Bros. and Legendary pushed that opening back to March 2024 and no other blockbuster stepped in to take its spot.
A growing number of Californians are planting agave to be harvested forz use in spirits. The trend is fueled by the need to find hardy crops that don’t need much water and a booming appetite for premium alcoholic beverages.
Big Business This Week is a guided tour through the biggest market stories of the week, from winning stocks to brutal dips to the facts and forecasts generating buzz on Wall Street. This week we highlight Paramount, Maersk, Starbucks, Uber, Lyft and Beyond Meat.
With Donald Trump due on the witness stand next week, testimony from his adult sons in his civil business fraud trial wrapped up Friday with Eric Trump saying he relied completely on accountants and lawyers to assure the accuracy of financial documents key to the case.
DraftKings reported better-than-expected revenue in the third quarter.
Wallet Hub released a list of the 10 states with the highest median monthly student loan payments.
