Elon Musk is no longer Twitter’s largest shareholder, Vanguard group ups stake to 10.3%

New Delhi: After having picked up a 9.2% stake in Twitter on April 4, Tesla CEO Elon Musk became the microblogging site’s largest stakeholder. But that’s not the case now, as funds held by the Vanguard group have taken a 10.3% holding in Twitter, making it the largest shareholder in the San Francisco-headquarter social media major.

According to the most recent publicly
available filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC), Vanguard now owns 82.4 million shares of Twitter, or 10.3% of the firm.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Vanguard’s holdings are now worth $3.78 billion, based on Twitter stock’s closing price on Wednesday.

The Journal said, “ Vanguard isn’t making a directional bet on Twitter…Instead, the majority of its assets are in index and other so-called passive funds. The firm often sides with management on voting issues and doesn’t advocate for changes like a hedge fund or activist investor might.”

The Vanguard group owned around 70.4 million Twitter shares as of last December, accounting for 8.8% of all outstanding shares.

Musk, on the other hand, is Twitter’s largest individual shareholder with company cofounder Jack Dorsey coming in second spot (again as an individual shareholder.)

On Wednesday, Musk
offered to buy 100% of Twitter in an updated 13D filing with the SEC wherein he is offering $54.20 per share in cash to buy the San Francisco headquartered micro blogging site for $41.39 billion.He later landed a seat on the company’s board of directors
before reversing those plans.

Musk initially disclosed a stake in Twitter of about 73.5 million shares earlier this month, but his investment was reduced to 73.1 million shares, or 9.1% of the firm, a day later.

The Twitter board appeared to be against a purchase on Thursday. The board of directors was considering whether to use a “poison pill,” a defensive corporate technique that raises the price of the target’s stock in order to deter an undesirable takeover offer.

At a TED Talk in Vancouver, Musk hinted at the possibility of a hostile bid in which he would bypass Twitter’s board and put the offer directly to its shareholders, tweeting: “It would be utterly indefensible not to put this offer to a shareholder vote.”

Musk’s Twitter polls

Musk, who has previously criticized the social media giant publicly, ran yet another poll on Friday. “Taking Twitter private at $54.20 should be up to shareholders, not the board,” Musk polled users with a yes or no option.

Musk also tweeted a screenshot of a Goldman Sachs report from February 10, which showed a $30 price objective for the stock.

Earlier this month, Musk started a Twitter poll asking users if they want an edit button.” Do you want an edit button?” tweeted Musk.

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