Elon Musk, the billionaire poised to acquire Twitter later this week, strolled into the company’s headquarters Wednesday carrying a porcelain sink and tweeting “Entering Twitter HQ - let that sink in!”
Musk’s $44 billion deal to take Twitter private faces a Friday deadline, although the video he posted offered no evidence that the acquisition is complete. Twitter and Musk representatives had no comment on that question, although Twitter did confirm that Musk’s video tweet was real. Musk also changed his Twitter profile to refer to himself as “Chief Twit” and his location to Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters.
The splashy video — a vintage Musk production — also pulled the spotlight back to the world’s richest man and his on-again, off-again pursuit of the social platform.
The Friday deadline to consummate the deal was ordered by the Delaware Chancery Court in early October. It is the latest step in an epic battle during which Musk signed a deal to acquire Twitter, then tried to back out of it, leading Twitter to sue the Tesla CEO to force him to conclude the deal. If the two sides don’t meet the Friday deadline, the next step could be a November trial.
Robert Anderson, a law professor at Pepperdine University, said he fully expects the deal to close by Friday’s deadline but didn’t see much substance to Musk’s video. “I don’t see anything unusual about it, other than that he brought a sink,” he said.
Musk had been expected to visit Twitter this week and is expected to return again Friday if the deal is finalized, according to an internal memo cited in a report by Bloomberg News.
His apparent enthusiasm about visiting Twitter headquarters stood in sharp contrast to one of his earlier suggestions that the building should be turned into a “homeless shelter” because, he said, so few employees actually worked there.
The Washington Post reported last week that Musk told prospective investors that he plans to cut three quarters of Twitter’s 7,500 workers when he becomes owner of the company. The newspaper cited documents and unnamed sources familiar with the deliberation. Several hours after posting his sink video, Musk tweeted that he was meeting “a lot of cool people at Twitter today!” He gave no details.