Elon Musk loses Twitter's 'biggest shareholder' tag; Vanguard surpasses with 10.3% stake

Elon Musk, who became the largest shareholder of Twitter just recently, has now lost the title to Vanguard Group after the latter purchased a majority stake in the company. According to The Wall Street Journal's report, Vanguard on April 8 disclosed that it has bought 82.4 million shares of the micro-blogging platform, which accounts for 10.3% of the total stake. The US Securities and Exchange Commission filings have revealed that Vanguard's shares are worth $3.78 billion, as per Twitter stock’s closing price on April 13. 

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, on the other hand, owns 9.1% of the company stake which he acquired earlier this month. Musk is a close second with the ownership of 73.1 million shares which are worth approximately $3 billion. Citing FactSet as a source, Wall Street Journal reported that as of December 2021, Vanguard used to own 67.2 million shares of Twitter or about 8.4% of the company.

Debate over Musk's takeover of Twitter continues

Meanwhile, the entire world is debating the potential aftermath of Elon Musk buying out Twitter. The billionaire, on Thursday, made an offer to pay $54.20 for each share of the social media site which took its buyout price to $43 billion. It is worth noting, however, that Twitter is reluctant in falling for the offer and reports suggest that the company might use the 'poison pill' tactic to escape Musk's purchase. This tactic dilutes the ownership interest of the buyer by allowing existing shareholders to purchase new shares at a discounted price. 

Musk, on the other hand, appears to seem ready for such a situation, stating that he has a 'Plan B'. In addition to this, the tech mogul has also reiterated what should the Twitter board do to uphold the interests of company shareholders. "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", Elon Musk tweeted in response to the idea of a 'poison pill' strategy. Musk was responding to Bitcoin investor Cameron Winklevoss who tweeted that the micro-blogging platform would "rather self-immolate than give up their censorship programs".

Image: AP