Hours after American entrepreneur Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter, a Saudi prince and a major shareholder in the micro-blogging platform, Alwaleed bin Talal, on Thursday, 15 March,said that he rejects the offer.
Soon after Talal's statement, Musk countered the prince, asking two questions.
"I don't believe that the proposed offer by Elon Musk ($54.20) comes close to the intrinsic value of Twitter given its growth prospects. Being one of the largest and long-term shareholders of Twitter, Kingdom Holding Company (KHC) and I reject this offer," Saudi prince Talal said in a post, which claimed that a 5.2 percent stake of Twitter was owned by the prince and his company, Kingdom.
Responding to Talal's tweet, Musk wrote on Twitter,
"Interesting. Just two questions, if I may. How much of Twitter does the Kingdom own, directly and indirectly? What are the Kingdom's views on journalistic freedom of speech?"
This comes after Tesla CEO Musk made his “best and final” offer to buy 100 percent of Twitter for around $43 billion, according to an updated filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday.
Musk's Offer To Buy Twitter
In a letter delivered to Twitter on 13 April, Musk offered to “acquire all of the outstanding Common Stock of the issuer not owned by the Reporting Person for all cash consideration valuing the Common Stock at $54.20 per share.”
The price represents a 38 percent premium over the closing price of the stock on 1 April, the day the entrepreneur publicly announced his acquisition of the shares.
In his letter, Musk said he intends to take Twitter private and would need to reconsider his position as shareholder if his offer is not accepted. "Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it," he wrote.
Twitter said that the board has received the "unsolicited, non-binding" proposal and will "carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the company and all Twitter stockholders.”
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal had revealed that Elon Musk decided not to join the company's board, days after news broke that the Tesla chief had become Twitter's largest sole shareholder with a 9.2 percent stake worth $3 billion.
Musk is the richest man on the planet with wealth of about $260 billion according to Bloomberg.
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