If Elon Musk wants an ally in his bid to buy Twitter, he has one — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The Florida governor said Tuesday that the state is considering action against the Twitter board of directors for resisting Mr. Musk’s offer to purchase the company.
Florida’s pension fund is an investor in the publicly held firm and Mr. DeSantis said the board’s rejection may violate its duties to act in the shareholders’ interests.
“I don’t want to expend resources just to kind of be able to send out a press release or something. I mean, we really want to feel like we have a solid theory to be able to win,” Mr. DeSantis said. “But I can tell you just looking at it, most of the time the people I talk to would say if you’re on the board in that situation, you really do need to sell. It’s a massive return for your shareholders. I mean, most people and their investment vehicles are not making 20% in a year.”
Mr. Musk’s offer of $43 billion — or $54.20 per share — was about 20% higher than the social-media giant’s $45.08 closing price the day he made the offer.
Mr. DeSantis said the board’s adoption of a “poison pill” defense designed to make it hard for Mr. Musk or anyone else to buy Twitter without the board of directors’ approval was a political decision not a business one.
“They rejected it because they know they can’t control Elon Musk,” Mr. DeSantis said. “They know that he will not accept the narrative and that their little play toy of Twitter, it would not be used to enforce orthodoxy, and to basically prop up the regime and these failed legacy media outlets. And so that’s why they did it. It was not, in my judgment, because it wasn’t a good business deal.”
Mr. Musk hasn’t publicly solicited political help or mentioned Mr. DeSantis or Florida in this context.
But he did use similar language last week in saying that the board’s resistance may constitute a breach of its “fiduciary duty” — a key legal term in such cases — and may open up a court case.
“If the current Twitter board takes actions contrary to shareholder interests, they would be breaching their fiduciary duty. The liability they would thereby assume would be titanic in scale,” he wrote — ironically, on Twitter.
• Victor Morton can be reached at vmorton@washingtontimes.com.
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