Hostile Takeovers and Poison Pills: The Week Elon Musk Came for Twitter
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pkp587/hostile-takeovers-and-poison-pills-the-week-elon-musk-came-for-twitter
Elon Musk’s attempts to buy Twitter have sent ripples through the social media platform. There is a story here about panic, the limited reach of social media, and the increasingly fuzzy nature of the private/ public space … but I think all that is a surface level analysis. For me, the more interesting story is the corporate what lies just underneath.
You see, Musk is the richest man not because he invented anything wonderful and world changing. No, he’s rich because he’s good at making money. He’s a businessman first and foremost. Through that lens, the story of the Twitter acquisition becomes one of shitposts and SEC filings, a bizarre fight between tech titans, a rehashing of old corporate techniques like “poison pills” and “hostile takeovers.”