Table of Contents
What has happened?
- Elon Musk has taken a 9.2% stake in Twitter, according to a US securities filing.
- The announcement sent Twitter shares soaring by more than 27% in New York trading on Monday.
Shares worth
- Tesla’s chief executive owned 73,486,938 shares in the social media platform as of 14 March, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
- The stake is worth $2.89bn (£2.2bn), based on Twitter’s closing price on Friday.
- It makes him the largest shareholder in the company, with more than four times the 2.25% holding of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.
Passive investment
- Elon Musk’s stake in Twitter is considered a passive investment, which means Musk is a long-term investor that’s looking to minimise his buying and selling of the shares.
- Passive investment means that the shareholder has no active role in running a company.
- Any time an investor buys 5% or more of a company’s shares, they must disclose the purchase in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
- Although a stake of less than 10% in a company is considered “passive” in the eyes of Wall Street, it could signal an effort by Musk to take a more active role in how Twitter is run.
- That is one of the factors prompting other investors to buy shares and drive up the price
Indication last month
- Mr Musk is a regular Twitter user with more than 80 million followers, Although recently he said he is giving “serious thought” to building a new social media platform.
controversies
- He regularly uses Twitter to share updates from the companies he owns – including SpaceX and Neuralink.
- He is also known for sharing memes, adding to his popularity among fans.
- But some posts have drawn controversy.
- Last year he tweeted in response to a claim, made by the head of the UN World Food Programme (WFP), that just 2% of Mr Musk’s wealth could help to solve world hunger.
- In October, Mr Musk said he would sell $6bn in Tesla stock and donate it to the WFP, provided it could describe “exactly how $6bn will solve world hunger”.
Musk’s wealth
- Mr Musk saw the valuation of his Tesla car company surpass a market value of $1 trillion last autumn, making it the fifth such firm to reach the milestone, after Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google-owner Alphabet.
- Soon after he took to Twitter to ask users if he should sell a 10% stake in the electric carmaker.
- More than 3.5 million Twitter users voted, with nearly 58% voting in favour of the share sale leading to Musk selling around $5bn of shares in the firm in November.
Twitter CEO
- Twitter founder Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO last November in a sudden move without the kind of advance notice that typically is given with this type of leadership change.
- He was succeeded by Parag Agrawal, who had been chief technology officer.
- Musk had expressed support for Dorsey in the past when he was facing criticism from some shareholders.
Q) The promoter of the National Stock Exchange is?
- State Bank of India (SBI)
- LIC and GIC
- Industrial Development Bank of India (IDBI)
- All of the above
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