The Big Picture

Vincent Boland: A €16bn valuation gap is enough to give anyone the Twitter jitters

Elon Musk is now wriggling to escape a trap of his own making in his pursuit of the social media platform, but whatever the outcome, Musk owns this debacle

Musk pounced on Twitter after its shares had tumbled by a third from their all-time high early last year. Picture: Getty

You can see Elon Musk’s problem. On April 14, the electric-car entrepreneur offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, valuing the social media platform at $44 billion. Stock markets have tumbled in the weeks since, and Twitter is now worth $28 billion. Even for the world’s richest person, that $16 billion valuation gap is a lot of money.

This is the issue at the heart of the most controversial takeover deal of recent times ...