Twitter might go down as the most expensive impulse-buy in history.
After all, Elon Musk never really wanted to buy Twitter to begin with.
Musk offered, seemingly in jest, to buy the company in January 2022.
Cheered on by members of the far-right, Musk began investing in Twitter around the same time. By March, Musk owned 9.2% of the company, making him the largest shareholder.
By early April, Musk announced he planned to buy twitter for $43 billion - which was 38% higher than the company’s worth the day before he made the announcement. At the time, Musk lied in an SEC filing that he already secured the financing for the purchase.
By the end of the month, Twitter had implemented a poison pill to prevent the takeover, but eventually accepted Musk’s final offer of $44 billion.
By mid-May 2022, Musk started trying to weasel his way out of the purchase, questioning an audit of Twitter’s users which found less than 5% of accounts were fake. Two hours later he recanted. A few weeks later he was…
