Recently, there has been a steady stream of topics around Musk and Twitter, and now we know that Musk has ambitions to acquire Twitter, while Twitter launched a "poison pill" to fight a "back-to-back battle" to stop Musk, the "barbarian at the door."

Musk had previously refused to join the board of Twitter and recently said that a board would no longer be needed for a successful acquisition of Twitter. On April 18, local time, Musk tweeted:

If I succeed in acquiring Twitter, the salary of the board members will become $0, which is equivalent to saving Twitter about $3 million a year.

This is Musk's response to Gary Black, a partner at The Future Fund LLC, a US investment advisory firm. In his tweet, Blake listed the 2021 earnings of more than a dozen Twitter board members and said:

I would like to point out something obvious: if Mr Musk privatizes Twitter, Twitter board members will lose their jobs. It's actually a good part-time job, and the average annual salary for these people (Twitter directors) is between $250000 and $300000.

Musk and Twitter's Game of Thrones

There is a Game of Thrones going on between Musk and Twitter. In this power struggle, Musk offered to buy Twitter for about $43 billion.

Musk announced last Thursday that he plans to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in cash, valuing it at about $43 billion. In response, Twitter confirmed that it had received the proposal and indicated that its board of directors would review it.

Before proposing a full takeover, Mr Musk had already acquired more than 9 per cent of Twitter, not only becoming Twitter's largest shareholder, but also announcing that he would not join Twitter's board.

In the face of Musk's hostile takeover, Twitter officially launched the poison pill program on Saturday. This is a legal mechanism that can prevent Mr Musk from significantly increasing his stake in Twitter.

The poison pill plan, also known as "equity dilution anti-takeover measures" or "shareholder rights plan", is a defensive measure for acquired companies to resist potential hostile takeovers.

Twitter's board plans to dilute Musk's stake by increasing the number of shares on the market, which means Musk needs to spend more money to buy Twitter.

In addition, Twitter also announced that the board of directors has unanimously approved the one-year poison pill program.

Analysts say the aggressive move by Twitter's board is aimed at preventing Mr Musk from increasing his stake in the open market by more than 15 per cent and could eventually put an end to Mr Musk's planned acquisition of Twitter.

But Musk, the world's richest man, worth about $260 billion, should be "affordable" to acquire Twitter worth about $43 billion.

Wall Street news previous article analysis said that if Musk wants to buy Twitter completely, he may sell Tesla, Inc. shares again.

While planning the acquisition, the outspoken Musk also said publicly that Twitter needs to be "transformed" into a private company so that it can become a social media platform for free speech.

Musk tweeted on Saturday that the Twitter board's efforts to prevent the company from being acquired by it shows that the economic interests of Twitter board members are "completely inconsistent with shareholders" and that Twitter board members hold almost no shares in Twitter.

In addition, Musk said in an interview at the TED conference in Vancouver on April 14 local time that he did not care about making money from Twitter and admitted that his proposal to privatize it might not succeed.

Mr Musk said that the offer of $54.20 a share was his highest and final offer, and that if it was not accepted, he could sell his Twitter shares until he withdrew completely.

Twitter rose 7.48% to $48.45 as of April 18, when U.S. stocks closed.