Twitter is no more a public company. The NYSE website said that trading in Twitter shares will be frozen on Friday. The social media giant was formally
acquired by Elon Musk on October 27 in a deal that saw a confrontation, a courtroom
battle and some firings immediately. Musk is taking the company private as a
part of the deal resulting in the delisting of the company’s stock and taking
it out of the hands of the public stakeholders. 

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Almost nine years after being listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 2013, Twitter will be suspended from trading on October 28. Along with NYSE, crypto trading platforms like eToro and Robinhood also delisted Twitter shares from their platform.

Musk acquired the social media giant at $54.2 per share, bringing the total value of the deal to around $44 billion.

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On Thursday, Twitter (TWTR) shares closed at $53.70, 0.6% higher than the previous day’s close. The stock price is at the same level as it was 12 months ago. So far in 2022, the stock price of Twitter has surged nearly 24%.

Twitter will now be a private company and shareholders will receive $54.20 per share. However, Twitter going private might not have come as a surprise for many as Musk has expressed the idea long before including it in the deal.

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Taking Twitter private would offer Musk certain regulatory advantages and save him a few million dollars in fines. Musk was fined $40 million for “joking” about taking Tesla private.

Being a private company would also prevent some financial scrutiny from investors and it will no longer be required to make quarterly disclosures about the health of its business.

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“The bird is freed,” Musk wrote on Twitter after he completed his $44 billion takeover on Thursday, referencing Twitter’s bird logo. Musk said he wants to prevent the platform from becoming an echo chamber for hate and division. He also wants to “defeat” spam bots and create algorithms that determine how content is presented to its users publicly available. However, Musk has not provided any details on how he will achieve all this and who will run the company.