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GPP’s recent piece on retail shareholder solicitation, published in Harvard Law Forum on Corporate Governance, highlights recent campaigns that used social channels from YouTube to Reddit to get out the vote to retail shareholders. Companies are realizing they need to meet their investors where they congregate in addition to the traditional mailings and call centers.
The note highlighted Nikola’s get-out-the-vote campaign by engaging in a multifaceted, multichannel campaign using Reddit, Twitter and YouTube, as well as last year’s vote to approve Churchill IV’s investment in Lucid Air using these newer social channels.
Moving on to more exciting news in Twitter v. Musk. On Tuesday, if one were to gauge the Musk-Twitter odds by the stock price, which is what we do all day, this week was a win for team Twitter and a loss for team Rocket as the stock rallied 8% on the developments in Wilmington.
It was unearthed in a hearing that Elon Musk texted a Morgan Stanley banker in June to “slow” his already signed and announced $44 billion planned acquisition of Twitter, citing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Musk texted that the deal wouldn’t “make sense... if we’re heading into World War 3,” which Bloomberg’s Matt Levine points out isn’t how merger agreements work. An email from another banker alluded to paying in a contingent value right, or CVR, signaling a way to somehow re-price his $54.20 per share deal.
Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick chided the Musk team for not providing required texts and emails and seems to be growing impatient with them, ordering Musk and Jared Birchall to turn over text messages. Most importantly in some respects, she kept to her timetable of an October trial.
However, the setback was followed by some positive news for Musk and his team. The Delaware Chancery Court granted his legal team approval to amend counterclaims filed in the case following the whistle-blower complaint from former Twitter security head Peiter “Mudge” Zatko.
Have a great weekend,
GPP Team
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