Written by: 0xjs@Golden Finance
Ever since Musk spent $44 billion to acquire Twitter (later renamed X) and privatized it in 2022, the public has been curious about who other shareholders of X are besides Musk.
The full list of shareholders of X Holdings Corp., the parent company of social media giant X, has been publicly disclosed for the first time, according to an order from U.S. District Judge Susan Illston in San Francisco. The disclosure was made in response to a motion filed in July by the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press on behalf of technology journalist Jacob Silverman. The motion sought to make public a list of shareholders that was part of a separate legal case filed in 2023 by several former investors who claimed their arbitration agreement was violated after Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion in October 2022.
According to documents disclosed by the court, X's lawyers initially submitted the list to the court in June 2023, and it was not made public until this week.
Source: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25057281-elon-musk-x-co-owners-court-filing
According to public information, as of October last year, Musk held 75% of Company X's shares, and no other shareholder held more than 10% of the shares.
Who are the investors?
According to documents released by the federal court, there are 95 entities on the complete shareholder list of X. However, the document only gives the list of shareholders and does not provide specific shareholding details.
These investors include:
Saudi Arabian prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud and his Kingdom Holding Co.; cryptocurrency company Binance; billionaire Bill Ackman's Pershing Square; sports and media agency IMG; funds related to venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz, ARK, Sequoia Capital, Baron, DFJ and 8VC; trusts under Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison; and trusts under Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey; entities related to rapper Sean "Diddy" Combs;
and at least 27 shareholders who are different investment vehicles associated with Fidelity Investments, a Boston-based mutual fund company and brokerage firm, with X listing only one Fidelity entity as a common owner in 2022;
Full list of X shareholders:
8VC Opportunities Fund II, L.P.
ADREM X LLC
ADREM Y LLC
Afshar Partners, LP
Andrea Stroppa
Andreessen Horowitz LSV Fund III, L.P.
Anthem Ventures, LLC
ARK Venture Private Holdings LLC
BAMCO, Inc.
Bandera Fund LLC
Baron Opportunity Fund
Baron Partners Fund
Binance Capital Management Co., Ltd
Brookfield Project X L.P.
CCM 2020 Investments LLC
Cheng and Chen Family Trust
CNK Fund IV, L.P.
Danilo Kawasaki
Dayton Family Enterprises, LLC
Dayton Family Investments, LLC
DFJ GROWTH IV, L.P.
DFJ GROWTH IV PARALLEL FUND, LLC
DFJ GROWTH X-I, L.P.
Eden Relationship Capital L.P.
Elon Musk as Trustee of the Elon Musk Revocable Trust dated July 22, 2003
FIAM Target Date Blue Chip Growth Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Institutional Asset Management Trust Company as Trustee
Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as Trustee
Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Institutional Trust By its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC
Fidelity Canadian Growth Company Fund by its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC
Fidelity Central Investment Portfolios LLC: Fidelity U.S. Equity Central Fund - Communication Services Sub
Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Advisor New Insights Fund - Sub A
Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Advisor New Insights Fund - Sub B
Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Contrafund
Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Contrafund K6
Fidelity Contrafund: Fidelity Series Opportunistic Insights Fund
Fidelity Contrafund Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as Trustee
Fidelity Destiny Portfolios: Fidelity Advisor Diversified Stock Fund
Fidelity Global Growth and Value Investment Trust - Sub A By its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC:
Fidelity Global Innovators Investment Trust by its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC
Fidelity Growth Company Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as Trustee
Fidelity Insights Investment Trust By its manager Fidelity Investments Canada ULC
Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust: Fidelity Growth Company Fund
Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust : Fidelity Growth Company K6 Fund
Fidelity Mt. Vernon Street Trust: Fidelity Series Growth Company Fund
Fidelity OTC Commingled Pool By: Fidelity Management Trust Company, as
Trustee
Fidelity Puritan Trust: Fidelity Puritan Fund - Equity Sub B
Fidelity Puritan Trust: Puritan K6 Fund - Equity Subportfolio
Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund
Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity Blue Chip Growth K6 Fund
Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity OTC K6 Portfolio
Fidelity Securities Fund: Fidelity OTC Portfolio
Fidelity Select Portfolios : Select Communication Services Portfolio
G64 Ventures LLC
Gerber Kawasaki Inc.
GFNCI LLC
Gigafund 0.21, LP
Glacier Ventures LLC
Go Mav, LLC
HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud
HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud
IMG US, LLC
Jack Dorsey Remainder LLC
Jack Dorsey Tr Ua 12/08/2010 Jack Dorsey Revocable Trust
Kingdom Holding Company
Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust
Linda Ye and Robin Ren Family Foundation
Litani Ventures
Luchi Fiduciaria SR POS. 365
Manhattan Venture Partners X LLC
Mirae Asset Innovation X ONE, LLC
Mirae Asset Project X Fund I, LP
Olivier Janssens
Q Tetris Holding LLC
Ross Gerber
Santo Lira LLC
SC CDA1 LLC
SCGE Fund, L.P.
SCGGF III – U.S./India Management, L.P.
SCHF (M) PV, L.P.
Scott Nolan
SC US/E Expansion Fund I Management, L.P.
Sean Combs Capital, LLC
Sequent (Schweiz) AG as Trustee of the Debala Trust
Sequoia Capital Fund, L.P.
Series N Dis, a series of Atreides Special Circumstances Fund, LLC
Shahidi Tactic Group, LLC
Steve Davis
T. One Holdings LLC
The Pershing Square Foundation
TM33 Partner Holdings LLC
Tresser Blvd 402 LLC
UnipolSai S.P.A.
Variable Insurance Products Fund II: VIP Contrafund Portfolio - Subportfolio A
VYC25 Limited
X Holdings I Investment, LLC
In 2022, Musk and the above investors spent $44 billion to acquire Twitter (later renamed X). Fidelity said this year that X's market value has fallen by about 75% since Musk's acquisition.
One of Wall Street's worst takeovers
According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk's acquisition of Twitter was disastrous, and the loan he used to acquire Twitter has become the bank's worst M&A financing deal since the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
According to public information, seven banks participated in Musk's acquisition and privatization of Twitter in 2022, including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays and four other large banks, which provided Musk's holding company with approximately US$13 billion in loans.
Normally, banks that lend cash for acquisitions usually try to quickly sell the debt to other investors to get it off their balance sheets. But that didn’t happen in the Twitter deal. The banks couldn’t sell the debt without taking a huge loss. That’s largely because Twitter’s financials were in such bad shape that they couldn’t find anyone willing to buy the claims. That meant they were saddled with the largest amount of loans ever “overhang,” or stuck on banks’ balance sheets.
Since Musk took over the social media company, Twitter's market value has fallen by nearly 75% from the $44 billion that Musk initially acquired it for to about $12.5 billion.
The Wall Street Journal reported that although these banks are currently charging interest on Twitter loans, some banks are eager to move these bad loans off their balance sheets, so they can only silently write down these hundreds of millions to billions of dollars of loans. Twitter's bad deal also caused some banks to fall in the rankings of investment banks. Bank of America and Morgan Stanley lost the top two spots in the banking industry rankings to JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, which did not provide loans for Musk to acquire Twitter.
At the same time, the pay of some bankers has also been affected by these loans. In 2023, top investment bankers in Barclays' mergers and acquisitions team were told that their compensation would be reduced by at least 40% from the previous year. Sources said that Barclays had multiple pending transactions that affected its overall performance, and the Twitter loan was the largest transaction among them.
Saving X: Payment, traffic and AI
As mentioned earlier, there are multiple reasons for Twitter's market value plummeting.
Part of the reason may be Musk's behavior at X and his changes to many of the site's features, which are believed to have led to a loss of users. At the same time, during Musk's tenure as Twitter CEO, the company's relationship with advertisers has been strained, leading to a loss of advertisers, which is the source of most of Twitter's revenue.
On the other hand, X is struggling between the high interest of the acquisition loan and the dismal revenue. It is said that X needs to pay $1.5 billion in debt interest every year, which even for Twitter before it was acquired, it accounted for nearly one-third of its $5 billion revenue.
Faced with the tragic situation of X, Musk is also seeking to save X's valuation through a multi-pronged approach from three aspects: payment, traffic and AI.
Payment: Payment function is an important reason why Musk spent a huge amount of money to acquire Twitter. Musk has repeatedly stated that he wants to turn X into a universal application similar to WeChat. Data shows that X Payments, a subsidiary of X, has obtained money transmission licenses in 28 states in the United States. It seeks to obtain licenses in all states of the United States by the end of 2024 and launch the X payment function in the United States. Musk's ambitious goal is to make X the largest payment institution in the United States. X is very likely to support cryptocurrency payments in the future, and may even launch its own US dollar stablecoin.
Traffic: Needless to say, traffic. Musk himself has 195 million and nearly 200 million fans on X. He is extremely active on X, making various comments on various topics such as politics and economy, and trying his best to attract users to X. On August 13, 2024, Musk personally went out to talk with Trump on Twitter Space, with 1.3 million people online at the same time, and the total number of Space listeners reached 270 million.
Of course, Musk's traffic on X is a double-edged sword. "Musk maximizes the political value that X brings him. In turn, people's trust in X will become polarized."
AI: Humans have already stepped into the AI era. Grok, the main product of xAI, Musk's AI company, has been integrated into X. Currently, all X premium subscribers can use the Grok robot for free. Grok can achieve three goals at once: it can activate users to become X subscribers, allow users to use Grok to create content and spread it to bring more traffic, and use the content produced by X users to train the Grok AI model.
