Musk No Longer Twitter’s Largest Stakeholder

Washington, April 15: Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is no longer the largest shareholder in Twitter as The Vanguard Group has recently increased their stake in the micro-blogging company.

While Elon Musk is trying to buy Twitter Inc., he’s no longer the company’s largest shareholder, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, adding that Funds held by Vanguard Group recently upped their stake in the social-media platform, making the asset manager Twitter’s largest shareholder and bumping Musk out of the top spot.

On April 8, the investment company, Vanguard had revealed that it now owns 82.4 million shares of Twitter, or 10.3 per cent of the company, according to the most recent publicly available filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Based on Twitter stock’s closing price on Wednesday, Vanguard’s shares are now worth $3.78 billion. Vanguard increased its stake in the company at some point during the first quarter, the filings showed. According to FactSet, That’s enough to knock Must off the perch as Twitter’s largest shareholder.

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 Wall Street Journal reported.

Earlier this month, Musk had announced that he has bought a 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter and it made him the largest shareholder in the company. But later on April 11, he also declined the offer to be a part of the board. “Elon has decided not to join our board. I sent a brief note to the company..,” Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal said.

Twitter shares started falling after it was revealed that its largest shareholder Musk has refused to join the board of directors. On morning of April 11, the shares of Twitter were down 2.66 per cent at $45, CNBC reported, citing the market data.

According to FactSet, Vanguard previously reported owning 67.2 million shares of Twitter or about 8.4 per cent of the company as of the end of December. However, Vanguard declined to comment. Musk along with ex-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who is number seven on the list, are the only individuals among the top 10 shareholders in the company, The Wall Street Journal further reported, adding that the remaining spots are taken by the financial institutions. On Thursday, Musk offered to buy Twitter outright for $54.20 per share.