Saudi Prince Alwaleed, Jack Dorsey Among Top Investors In Twitter After Musk Turnover.

Saudi Prince Alwaleed, Jack Dorsey Among Top Investors In Twitter After Musk Turnover

HIGHLIGHTS

• In April, Musk originally agreed to purchase Twitter.
• Dorsey remarked that Wall Street “owns” the company.
• Alwaleed quickly endorsed Musk’s proposal to purchase Twitter.

The much-anticipated acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, was completed last week. Thanks to assistance from Wall Street bank loans and stockholders who agreed to roll over their investment in Twitter in exchange for a stake in the new private firm, the Tesla CEO finally acquired Twitter for $44 billion after a rollercoaster of around six months.

According to a Bloomberg story, this indicates that Twitter, whose shares were delisted last week after almost a decade as a public corporation, has a new lineup of elite investors. Want to discover their identities? Here is a list of the major investors who aided Elon Musk in completing his acquisition of Twitter.

• Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, rolled over little more than 18 million shares, or about 2.4% of the publicly traded firm, valued at almost $978 million at the merger price. As a result, he received shares of Elon Musk’s Twitter-controlling X Holdings I Inc.

Jack Dorsey reportedly bemoaned that Wall Street “possessed” the company when Elon Musk initially agreed to buy Twitter in April and declared that taking the company private was the “right” first move. Following Dorsey’s resignation as CEO of Twitter in November 2021, Parag Agrawal served in that capacity until Elon Musk sacked him this week.

Due to Dorsey’s choice, he is now one of the few Twitter stakeholders having ties to previous management in Musk’s company. The board of directors of Twitter was disbanded by Musk almost immediately after he took control of the business. In recent days, a large portion of the company’s C-suite has also either been dismissed or quit.

The CEO and co-founder of two wildly successful tech businesses, Twitter and Square Inc., is an American named Jack Patrick Dorsey, 43. Twitter was first introduced in 2006 and has since grown to become one of the most well-known social media platforms, whereas Square is a small business payments company that was created in 2009 and made its services available to the general public in 2015.

• Alwaleed bin Talal, Prince

According to a Bloomberg story, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a Saudi billionaire, transferred over 35 million Twitter shares through the Kingdom Holding Co., valued at about $1.9 billion at the transaction price of $54.20 per share. In the new parent business, that made a Saudi Prince the “second-largest investor.”

It has been asserted that Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter received swift approval from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who stated earlier in May 2022 that Elon Musk would be “a brilliant head” required for the social networking platform. Alwaleed, the Saudi king’s nephew, was one of the most well-known Saudi investors in American companies for many years. He invested $590 million in preferred shares of Citigroup (then known as Citicorp) in 1991 when Citi was under pressure from regulators to increase its capital base.

By 2007, that investment had increased in value to more than $9.5 billion. Along the way, he acquired shares in businesses like HP, Apple, Kodak, and others, and he advanced to the top of Forbes’ list of the World’s Billionaires. Alwaleed and nearly 200 other people were jailed by the Saudi government in the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh in November 2017 on unclear corruption-related charges. Due to uncertainty over the assets he still owned, Forbes delisted Alwaleed from the list of billionaires in March 2018 and also delisted other Saudis who had been listed as billionaires.

Alwaleed and the Qatari fund contributed 32% of the original $7.1 billion equity pledge, which is wonderful news for Musk. Because they did not own Twitter shares prior to signing the letter, the other 17 signatories, including Oracle’s Larry Ellison and venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz, were exempt from making SEC reports.

• Qatar Investment Authority

According to reports, $375 million was given by the Qatar Investment Authority, a division of the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, in exchange for stock in Musk’s holding company. Based on a loss in an index of Twitter shares, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index calculates that the value of the stakes carried over from Twitter stock has decreased by nearly 40% since Elon Musk announced his takeover approach in April.

To safeguard and develop Qatar’s financial assets and promote economic diversification, QIA was founded in 2005. The State of Qatar’s government controls and owns QIA in full, and it has an independent legal personality and a budget. QIA is a multinational investment company with holdings in all significant international markets, asset classes, industries, and regions. Their teams represent a varied group of nearly 40 countries. With all of our investments, they hope to make a good difference.

• What Lies Ahead For Twitter?

Despite going through a lot throughout its history, Twitter is still one of the most widely used social networking sites worldwide. The site has been used to spread news, link people from around the world, and support political uprisings. What lies ahead for this venerable business will only be determined with time, but one thing is certain: Twitter is here to stay.

Edited by Prakriti Arora