Twitter board recommends shareholders vote for Musk takeover

Twitter's board has unanimously recommended shareholders vote for Elon Musk to take over the social media giant.

In late April, Twitter's board initially accepted a takeover offer worth $44 billion at $54.20 a share, with shareholder approval the last hurdle for the deal in case Musk might make any more bizarre moves .

According to a June 21 SEC filing, Twitter's board agreed that "a merger agreement is desirable" and called on shareholders to vote in favor of the deal.

Twitter will hold a virtual meeting to vote on the merger within the Oct. 24 deadline, the board said.

If the merger is successful, shareholders will receive $54.20 in cash per share, which represents a premium of about 39% considering Twitter stock TWTR is trading at $38.91 at the time of writing.

Earlier this month, Musk accused Twitter's board of directors of not providing data related to the number of fake users on the platform, and threatened that if he did not hand over the data, he would withdraw the acquisition offer, which appeared to be in the air.

The issue has since been resolved when the board agreed to share the data with Musk. Many onlookers believed that Musk was trying to back out of the deal, as Twitter shares have fallen since the offer was first made.

On June 16, Musk spoke to employees for the first time about the company's future development plans during a question-and-answer session, signaling his intention to move forward with acquisitions.

According to a leaked transcript of the call published by Vox, Musk said he might consider integrating a range of digital payments into the service, including cryptocurrencies:

“I think it would make sense to integrate payments into Twitter so it’s a lot easier to transfer money back and forth. If you have currency and crypto. Basically, as long as someone finds it useful.”

"So my goal is to get the most out of the service, the more useful it is the better. If people can use it to make convenient payments, that adds to its usefulness."

Bots and verified accounts were another issue he highlighted, with Musk outlining the value of introducing paid verified accounts that would allow users to distinguish real from fake users.

Musk emphasized that "there are a lot of cryptocurrency scams on Twitter" as a key reason for the feature.

The question is especially relevant for the Dogecoin supporter, given the recent spate of deepfake videos circulating on social media platforms using his likeness to promote a cryptocurrency scam.