(National Review) Twitter’s board of directors on Tuesday unanimously recommended that its shareholders approve the company’s proposed $44 billion sale to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The board unanimously “determined that the merger agreement is advisable and the merger and the other transactions contemplated by the merger agreement are fair to, advisable and in the best interests of Twitter and its stockholders,” according to the filing.
The deal has at times fallen into uncertainty since Musk first offered $54.20 per share to take the company private in April. Shares rose roughly 3 percent to $38.98 before the opening bell Tuesday.
Musk, who is the richest man in the world, said there are still a few “unresolved matters” involving the deal at the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday. He has previously expressed concern that Twitter had concealed information about the number of bots on the platform and threatened to pull out of the deal if the company did not provide additional information on the matter.
Musk has said that he wants to make Twitter “better than ever.”
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement on the deal. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
