Recently we covered how right-leaning vulture capitalist and newfound Pro-Trump convert Paul Singer — through his investment company Elliott Management — acquired a significant portion of Twitter’s shares and planned to oust Jack Dorsey from the company. We now know that Elliott Management has acquired a 4% stake in Twitter and the plan to oust Jack Dorsey has begun to move forward.
At the same time Silver Lake an investment firm that specializes in tech investment has agreed to purchase $1 billion in Convertible Senior Notes and for their investment has seated their Co-CEO, Egon Durban, to Twitter’s board alongside Jesse Cohn a partner at Elliott. A third independent board member will be appointed at a later date.
With the money from Silver Lake along with cash reserves, Twitter has announced they will repurchase $2 billion worth of outstanding shares. This is likely to strengthen Jack’s position at the company as he currently only possesses 13% of Twitter’s stock. While simultaneously preventing further stock acquisition by Elliott Management.
Twitter will go on to form a special 5 board member review committee that will analyze and evaluate Twitter’s management structure and whether Jack Dorsey will be keeping his position as CEO. Their findings are expected to be delivered at the end of the year, but this is merely to prevent stock devaluation as a result of ousting Jack immediately, while giving Jack the ability to fight for his position.
In their press statement, Twitter stated neither of the two massive investment firms would have sway over their policies.
Twitter is also reinforcing its commitment to impartiality in the development and enforcement of its policies and rules. As such, per the terms of the Cooperation Agreement, neither Elliott nor Silver Lake, will comment on or influence, or attempt to influence, directly or indirectly, any Twitter policies or rules, or policy or rule enforcement decisions, related to the Twitter platform. Elliott and Silver Lake further commit to, and emphasize the importance of, maintaining the independence and impartiality of the Twitter platform and its rules and enforcement.
It is rather strange that the company continues to focus on its impartiality when it is very clear there is none to most commenters. This promise is akin to a prestidigitation. Sure both companies who own a large amount of Twitter will not directly or indirectly attempt to influence the policies or rules. Yet both companies also now have sitting board members who decide what those policies and rules are.
Furthermore, with a five-member committee reviewing their corporate structure, Jack is going to need to curry political favors to retain his position on the board. In order to do so, the implementation of policies will have to shift as to convince both Elliot Management and Silver Lake that he can represent their interests.
The implication is simple, both companies will be able to influence how Twitter goes about implementing their policies. Ironically it may be Jack’s own stated stance of impartiality that Elliot Management could utilize to oust him from the company. As he has demonstrated a clear left bias in regards to promoted content, censored content, and routine purges slash prosecution of right-leaning accounts.
Only time will tell what will happen, but at the very least Jack and Twitter will be under pressure which in theory should limit their election interference this time around.
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