Like I don’t get it, he owns 9% of the shares, doesn’t he still need like 42% of other shareholders to vote in in as CEO? So isn’t he still subject to the will of the other shareholders? 🤔

(Disclaimer: I have no idea how this works, which is why I’m asking)

  • Kecessa
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    3 days ago

    Twitter is private, there’s no public shares anymore. The number you found was his stake before he purchased all the shares and before Twitter was taken off the markets.

    Yes you need to have 50%+1 share to have complete control over a company.

    Twitter probably still has shareholders, but that’s between Musk and them. Think about Shark Tank, when they say “I’ll offer X$ in exchange for Y% of the company.” Well Musk had to get the money to buy Twitter from somewhere.

  • Thorry84@feddit.nl
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    4 days ago

    Didn’t he buy the whole thing in a hostile takeover? That means no more publicly traded shares and he owns the whole thing. Probably through some complicated holdings construction but ultimately he owns it fully.

    He owned 9% of stock before the takeover. His price was way high, which is why he attempted to get out of it. And no shareholder complained as they got a good return on their investment.

    As far as I understand a lot of the finances came from different sources, like the Saudis. But the agreements around those aren’t public, so I don’t think anyone knows exactly if they can demand anything except money and what the rules are for Musk. Unless that’s been confirmed leaked, but I don’t care enough about Musk or Twitter to keep tabs on that.

  • Pika
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    3 days ago

    As others have said, you are likely running off an old metric that’s no longer true. Twitter / X is considered a privately traded company meaning that the shares that are owned aren’t publicly given anymore, he owns at least the majority of the private shares, however he stated he owns 100% of it.

    While he has control of the company because he’s the owner, he hasn’t fully paid for the company if that makes sense. Most of his purchase for the company was done by using his other stocks as collateral to be able to take out loans from the banks.

    This is why the article the other day came up of major banks are trying to sell his loans for cheaper than what they’re actually worth, because they’re no longer confident that Elon as a whole is going to be able to foot the bill like he said he was able to. (Honestly unless trump bails it out it’s a valid concern)

    Since he owns the company, he can make any decision he wants regarding the company, there is no publicly known shareholders have any decision. Now this isn’t to say that there isn’t privately owned shareholders, but since it’s a privately owned company they’re not obligated to disclose those percentages.

    • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Most of his purchase for the company was done by using his other stocks as collateral to be able to take out loans from the banks.

      gonna get really interesting when the banks start looking for their returns. watch, he’ll get Trump to bail it out.

      • bjornsno@lemm.ee
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        3 days ago

        That’s not how loans for billionaires work. The bank is very happy to only collect some interest on this huge loan for ever, and would be more than happy to give Elon more loans to buy other things. Because of the fractional reserve banking system the bank isn’t even running any real risk by doing this.

    • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      FYI he stopped using his stock as collateral for the purchase part way though. He sold more shares, and got more outside investment. Twitter itself has a loan as well, but it’s not backed by Elons stock.

      Edit: I think it’s worth adding… while the loan isn’t backed by Elons stock, if Twitter was failing and the bank came a knocking, he’d probably use his stock to save it.

      • Pika
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        3 days ago

        I didn’t realize he paid his stock parts off already, thats good to know!

        • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          I don’t know if he actually ever did it, or had just said he was going to? As in I’m not sure if there was anything to pay off. But there very well may have been an actual real collateralized debt there for a short period of time.

  • Hugin@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    So Musk owns twitter so there is no stock anymore. He does have loans for the purchase which are probably backed by his twitter ownership and his Tesla stock.

    However there is another way to not have majority ownership and still have majority voting power. Google has class A and class B shares. Each class A share gets 10 votes and class B shares get 1 vote.

    Only the founders of Google got class A shares and if they are transferred to anyone but another founder they revert to class B shares. So they have a minority ownership and a majority vote.

  • Stern@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Companies can have shares in multiple ways. For example, voting and non-voting.

    Alternately, a company can have shares that get more votes then others, so the owner of a company could, say, have 10% of shares, but those shares have 10x voting power. Thats how the WWE used to be before it was bought out.

  • ori@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    The business magnate Elon Musk initiated an acquisition of American social media company Twitter, Inc. on April 14, 2022, and concluded it on October 27, 2022. Musk had begun buying shares of the company in January 2022, becoming its largest shareholder by April with a 9.1 percent ownership stake. Twitter invited Musk to join its board of directors, an offer he initially accepted before declining. On April 14, Musk made an unsolicited offer to purchase the company, to which Twitter’s board responded with a “poison pill” strategy to resist a hostile takeover before unanimously accepting Musk’s buyout offer of $44 billion on April 25.

  • NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Ex-Twitter isn’t a good example of how shares work in general. For this company, I recommend the wiki here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Corp.

    To your other question: if you own >50% then the others have no real say anymore. If you own less than 50% then you can still try to convince them of your ideas, and in practice, there is often one who commands and the others follow.