Hollywood bigwig Ari Emanuel, who together with the Anti-Defamation League led the charge to cancel Kanye “Ye” West, quietly invested in Elon Musk’s Twitter one month after Ye was permanently banned from the platform.
Emanuel made the investment after Twitter had tanked in value by 56% and Musk was floating a potential bankruptcy.
From Axios, “Scoop: Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor invested in Twitter 2.0”:
Endeavor, the sports and entertainment company led by Ari Emanuel, invested in Twitter in mid-January, two sources tell Axios.
Why it matters: Endeavor is the first outside investor known to have bought into Twitter 2.0, subsequent to Elon Musk closing his $44 billion takeover and implementing a rash of layoffs and other changes.
Ye was permabanned on December 1st.
[…] Details: The investment wasn’t material to Endeavor, one source noted, but made sense for the firm strategically.
[…] Catch up quick: Musk began approaching investors in December to help raise money to pay off Twitter’s debt.
At the time, Axios’ Dan Primack reported that Musk, via his family office, was offering to sell additional equity to investors at the same $44 billion valuation that he paid for Twitter.
Between the lines: Fidelity cut its carrying value of Twitter by 56% during the first month of Elon Musk’s ownership, Axios reported in December.
Musk warned engineers and product staff in December that a Twitter bankruptcy “isn’t out of the question.”
It was reported in December that the company was struggling to hit its advertising targets, amid trepidations from marketers and broader macro economic trends impacting the ad market.
[…] Be smart: Musk and Emanuel have long had a close personal relationship.
In September, Bloomberg reported that Emanuel tried to pave the way for a settlement between Musk and Twitter, when Musk was trying to back out of the deal.
Musk was on Endeavor’s board until March 2022.
This may explain why Musk’s ban of Ye was permanent and the “general amnesty” he proposed never came to fruition.
Ye’s final tweet was a picture of Musk being hosed down by Emanuel while on vacation in Mykonos, Greece in July, 2022.
Emanuel wrote a column in December criticizing Ye and calling on Blacks to reject “the virus of antisemitism and hate and division” and instead unite with Jews against Whites.
Read the full article here
Discussion about this post