Twitter will appoint Elon Musk to its board of directors nearly 24 hours after news broke that Musk had bought almost $3 billion in the company’s shares.
Driving the news: Twitter submitted a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Tuesday, calling Musk a class II director until 2024.
- Per The Verge, the designation “can be used as an anti-takeover measure.”
What they said: “The Company will appoint Mr. Musk to the Company’s Board of Directors (the ‘Board’) to serve as a Class II director with a term expiring at the Company’s 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders,” the filing said.
- “For so long as Mr. Musk is serving on the Board and for 90 days thereafter, Mr. Musk will not, either alone or as a member of a group, become the beneficial owner of more than 14.9% of the Company’s common stock outstanding at such time, including for these purposes economic exposure through derivative securities, swaps, or hedging transactions.”
Flashback: On Monday, a filing from the SEC announced that Musk now owns 73,486,938 shares of Twitter, which is about 9.2% of the company’s stake, as I reported for the Deseret News.
- That stake was worth about $2.89 billion at the end of the day Friday, per CNBC.
Of note: Musk now owns 9.2% of the company’s stake, which is more than Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, who currently holds about 2.25% of the company’s shares, according to BBC News.
The bigger picture: Musk has been a noted Twitter critic over the last few months, saying that Twitter might not be offering free speech.
- Musk’s seat on the board of directors reportedly limits a takeover, especially with the class II director designation.
- Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told CNBC on Monday that “Musk could try to take a more aggressive stance here on Twitter. This eventually could lead to some sort of buyout.”
- “This makes sense given what Musk has at least been talking about, at least from a social media perspective,” Ives said.