I'm always amazed when that kind of question pops up. Because it shows how knowledge of basic business practices is less circulated.
If you're selling me a house and saying it's one size but in practice it's another you bet I'm taking it up with you! I can be happy to buy it as is (depending on the case) but this says a lot about the seller.
One of his goal was to get rid of spams bots and fake accounts. If you go that far to buy something because you think you can make it better by fixing an issue, you don't do it because that issue only represents 5% of it...
I remember when he said he was going to do that, a good proportions of comments were about how he will slash a most of his Twitter followers by doing so. Did Elon himself thought there were less bots than what the majority of people believed?
If you’re waiting until after signing a deal to do basic due diligence, especially on supposedly material information that didn’t even exist at the time you made your offer - Twitter reported the 5% figure in May, Elon made his offer in April - it is, 100%, unambiguously, on you.
None of that matters, because Elon can’t claim to be mislead by a figure that didn’t exist when he made his offer. Whatever he expected it to be has nothing to do with twitter saying it is 5% in May.
I dont think its fair to expect Elon, or anyone, to have done due diligence beforehand in a situation when it would have been impossible to collect the relevant info without some shady tactics. Unless you mean his team should have employed shady tactics to gather that info.?
Sure he may be employing this as a stalling tactic, but there’s no obligation for him to treat the Twitter folks with kid glove either. This is what high stakes negotiations are about.
Well, maybe, except there's a few problems with that;
- Buying Twitter is a bit different to buying a house. The offer price for shares is set, and (as far as I know) Elon can't move it without withdrawing and reoffering, which incurs all sorts of fun legal issues and penalties.
- If it's due diligence and Elon actually might withdraw from the deal then fair enough, but then it's not a bluff.
- If it's a bluff, and Elon still intends to buy, telling the world there are actually more spam/bots than the Twitter reported devalues the company. It doesn't seem like a great move as an investor.
If you're selling me a house and saying it's one size but in practice it's another you bet I'm taking it up with you! I can be happy to buy it as is (depending on the case) but this says a lot about the seller.