It is reported that Andreessen Horowitz, a well-known American venture capital company, recently decided to join hands with musk to participate in the merger and acquisition of twitter. However, this will bring about the conflict of interest of insiders. Marc Andreessen, co-founder of the venture capital company, is currently a member of the board of directors of twitter competitor and social media giant meta.
According to the musk acquisition financing plan announced on Thursday, Anderson Horowitz decided to invest $400 million in a $7.1 billion financing. This means that an early heavyweight venture capital shareholder of Facebook will become one of the new shareholders of twitter.
Ben Horowitz, another co-founder of the venture capital, tweeted that musk may be the only brave and resourceful person in the world to fix the twitter problem. He will be able to rebuild a "public square" that everyone expects.
Anderson has been a director of meta since 2008. Anderson Horowitz's participation in the twitter acquisition naturally reminds the outside world of this relationship.
However, John Coates, a professor at Harvard Law School, commented that it is not uncommon for investors of one company to participate in another competitor in Silicon Valley. However, if a listed company is involved, there may be a serious conflict of interest.
Coates said that a culture in Silicon Valley is that as long as the problem is not serious, it can be solved in the future. Therefore, the practice of participating in the equity of competitors was allowed or even encouraged in the past, but if you enter the field of listed companies, such a practice is "dangerous".
A representative of Anderson Horowitz said the company plans to invite legal counsel to ensure compliance with U.S. law in information sharing related to twitter.
Anderson, 50, is a big man in Silicon Valley. He has been repeatedly questioned by insiders about conflicts of interest. For example, meta company previously acquired oculus VR, a start-up company in the field of virtual reality, and Anderson is the investment shareholder of this company.
In addition, Anderson has also been sued by investors in court. The "charge" is that he once assisted Zuckerberg, the head of meta, to guide him on how to firmly control the voting rights of the company after selling some shares.
On twitter, Anderson publicly supported musk and strongly opposed the content censorship policies of some social media companies. Previously, musk said that after mastering twitter, he would relax content review.
David larcker, a professor at Stanford University, said that Anderson is not a member of the twitter board at present, so his relationship with meta may not cause problems. Lacker said that although there is no public data support, he believes that executives or board members of many U.S. companies will also buy and sell friendly stocks.
Twitter is much smaller than Facebook, but it is still regarded as a competitor of meta by the outside world. Both companies are attracting more users to post and compete for online advertising share.
According to people familiar with the matter, before Twitter's board of directors discussed whether to accept Musk's acquisition offer, the directors talked about the recent sharp decline in meta's capital market value. The directors concluded that Musk's offer was fair and reasonable.
If Musk's acquisition of Twitter is successfully completed, Anderson is not the only insider with conflict of interest in Anderson Horowitz.
The venture's partners include vineeta agarwala, the wife of Twitter's current CEO.
After musk took control of twitter, it is unknown whether egwa can still serve as CEO of twitter. However, musk publicly said that dissatisfaction with Twitter's existing management is one of the reasons why he chose to buy.
It was reported last night that musk may temporarily serve as CEO of twitter for a short time after the acquisition of twitter.