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0 pointste_chris4y ago0 comments

I really don’t understand this comment. You think the Twitter legal team are so dumb to not have negotiated an agreement in their own favour?

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7 comments · 2 top-level

ProfessorLayton4y ago· 3 in thread

I don't mean to be snarky but we're talking about the same company that shut down Vine and let TikTok happen. Their decision making has been baffling.

vore4y ago

You're making a category error. The legal team is not the product team.

rchaud4y ago

And Tesla has recalled nearly half a million cars mfg between 2017-20[0]. That's a solid percentage of all the cars they've manufactured during that time. I shudder to ask what you think of its leadership.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/30/tesla-recalls-475000-model-3...

spiderice4y ago

What? How is Tesla's car quality relevant to this conversation? You're really stretching here.

dragontamer4y ago· 2 in thread

> I really don’t understand this comment. You think the Twitter legal team are so dumb to not have negotiated an agreement in their own favour?

Oh, the agreement is absolutely in Twitter's favor if Musk pulls out of the deal.

But that doesn't mean *suing Musk* to complete the deal is actually their best move. As usual, the best move is probably some kind of plea-agreement (or starting to sue to get into the position of a plea-bargain), where the details are figured out.

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There's really no "political benefit" to forcing Elon Musk to become the new owner of Twitter. There's a lot of room for creativity here. Maybe Twitter manages to extract a $2 billion concession or $5 billion concession from Musk (rather than the limited $1 Billion in the deal, since that only applies to very restrictive terms)

Or maybe Twitter just bans Elon Musk from their platform for wanton trolling and collects the $1 Billion. Who knows?

Just because Twitter's Board is legally allowed to do X, doesn't mean that they will do X. They will use X to threaten Musk into doing Y (and Y is what they really want). I'm not sitting in Twitter's Board of Directors right now, I don't know what their "Plan Y" is. But I have reason to believe that X (ie: forcing Musk to buy Twitter at $54.20) isn't in their best interest.

sulam4y ago

How about the obvious fact that Twitter is not currently worth $54.20/share? It's probably worth half of that if it weren't for the offer, given this week's climate. Surely it's at least partly their responsibility to negotiate the best financial outcome for the shareholders.

dragontamer4y ago

> How about the obvious fact that Twitter is not currently worth $54.20/share?

Shame on Musk for writing $54.20 into the contract then.

Just because the value of something changed after you wrote the contract doesn't mean that you can break the contract unilaterally. Musk could have gotten around this with an all-stock deal (ex: I'll give the Twitter board 100,000 shares of TSLA or whatever), or other ways to write the contract without setting a particular dollar amount.

But Musk wrote $54.20 and signed it.

And the contract even says the Twitter Board can force Elon Musk to buy Twitter and finish the deal at $54.20. So they made it crystal clear to Musk (and his lawyers) that the $54.20 price points stays, no matter how Twitter's price changes over the next weeks.

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