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Comment by jliptzin | Hacker News Reader

Astounding to me that this is what the leadership at twitter wanted, even forcing Elon to go through with the deal when he tried backing out, knowing full well that this is what would happen to their employees. All for like 20-30% premium on the stock price.

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Leadership didn’t necessarily want this, shareholders did. Musk paid a huge premium in perhaps the worst takeover deal in a decade.

If the ceo and board had not taken the deal they would have been (rightly) ousted by the shareholders who lost tons of money.

> Leadership didn’t necessarily want this, shareholders did.

Musk is the shareholders though? Him and come-alongs, such as Larry Ellison.

Musk only owned about 10% of TWTR when the takeover attempt started. The majority of twitter shares were held elsewhere by shareholders who were more than happy to legally force Musk to pay ~2x market value for them after the tech stock market collapse.

By the time the deal closed, it was speculated Twitter should have been trading ~$25/share or less. So more like 100%+ premium.

Why is it astounding? Leadership is there to serve the interests of shareholders, not employees. For obvious reasons, this truth is usually elided behind talk of "company families" and "valued employees", but it never ceases to be the truth.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094012/quotes/qt0466959

Why astounding? They got paid a lot more than they should have so it made sense. Money makes people mean but that’s business as usual.

>Astounding to me that this is what the leadership at twitter wanted

If they didn't accept and try to finalize his offer, they could have been successfully sued by shareholders: You don't turn down a premium offer unless you think you can get better, and you absolutely finalize that deal if the market takes a sharp downtown after getting it.

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