Koch Industries’ Bet on Batteries

As part of an agreement Musk cannot buy more than 14.9 percent of Twitter’s shares, cutting off talk that he might mount an acquisition bid. But he will still have plenty of influence over Twitter’s strategy, and investors seem excited: Twitter’s stock is up about 30 percent over the past two days.

For Twitter, Musk’s appointment may lead to a shift in the way its service operates. Twitter, along with rivals like Facebook and TikTok, has grown by using algorithms to decide what users see. Musk’s vision is to hand control to users, giving them the tools to tailor their feeds as they see fit. Jack Dorsey, who stepped down as Twitter’s C.E.O. in November, has also argued for “decentralizing” the social network.

This could be risky. A decentralized Twitter would most likely be a freer platform, with implications for content moderation, misinformation and other issues that social networks wrestle with. Musk’s freewheeling tweets could also have repercussions when he becomes a Twitter insider. “Given Musk’s tendency to say or tweet newsworthy things, he could well land himself or Twitter in trouble,” James Angel, a finance professor at Georgetown’s business school, told DealBook. “The Elon Musk division at the S.E.C. will have fun with this.”

• In 2018, Musk settled with the S.E.C. and paid a fine over his market-moving tweet about a Tesla buyout that wasn’t as probable as he had suggested. Ever since, his tweets about the company must be vetted by lawyers. He is now trying to terminate that agreement in court.

And doesn’t Musk already have several jobs? Some research shows that C.E.O.s and their companies benefit when their leaders serve on outside boards (but not too many boards). The Twitter position would be Musk’s only outside board appointment, but he has lots of executive posts (Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and the Boring Company). Last month, when it was announced that Musk would resign from Endeavor’s board, a spokesperson for the talent agency noted his full plate: ​​“We know he has a lot of demands and little time, and we appreciate the support he provided us.”

“It is of paramount importance to get inflation down.”

— Lael Brainard, a Fed governor and President Biden’s nominee for vice chair of the central bank, in a speech yesterday. Investors took her remarks, along with similar statements from other Fed officials, as a sign of aggressive rate increases to come.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/06/business/dealbook/koch-desimone-blue-current-batteries.html