Could be a good acquisition for the X ticker and to vertically integrate Tesla, Boring Co, and SpaceX supply chains.
Resolves yes for any corporation where Elon is a 10%+ shareholder.
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Matt Levine has a column about this today. Some highlights:
> Any buyer of the whole company has to recognize the USW union and assume US Steel’s agreements with it, including the labor agreement that US Steel signed last year. (But the buyer can do this unilaterally; the USW can’t say no to the assumption.)
> The union has a “right to bid”: If anyone makes an offer to buy US Steel, the company has to tell the USW and give it 45 days to match the offer. But after that, “the Company shall not be under any obligation to accept such offer” from the USW: It just can’t sell to anyone else “unless that transaction is superior to the USW offer.” But if the USW offers $32 and someone else offers $35, US Steel can take the higher bid. [11]
> The union can assign that right to bid to someone else, which is what it did with Cleveland-Cliffs: Now Cleveland-Cliffs effectively owns the union’s right to bid.
> So this does not actually make Cleveland-Cliffs “the only realistic buyer”: If Cleveland-Cliffs offers $35 and Esmark offers $40, then Esmark wins. That said, the assignment does give Cleveland-Cliffs some big advantages. For one thing, if you are buying a big unionized company, it is probably better to have the union on your side; anyone else is going to be a bit more nervous about labor relations than Cleveland-Cliffs is, which might be reflected in price.
> [...]
> Anyway if I were US Steel I’d be trying to get a bid from Elon Musk? We know that he will impulsively overpay for companies, he probably has some use for steel, and most important he is obsessed with the letter “X.” US Steel’s stock-exchange ticker is X. You don’t get that ticker every day; surely it’s worth $10 billion to Musk.
[paywall warning]
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-08-23/could-sculptor-be-better-or-cheaper
The names of three of the bidders have been revealed: Cleveland-Cliffs, Esmark, and ArcelorMittal (is considering bidding but has not put in a bid.)
There is a legal controversy over whether the company can be acquired without the approval of the union:
>One big complication for U.S. Steel may be that its union contract requires any buyer to come to terms on a new labor agreement before a transaction closes, which the union argues gives it de facto veto rights.
https://www.axios.com/2023/08/18/us-steel-cleveland-cliffs-steelworkers
@nottelling2ccc It's not clear to me that a company's stock ticker is its property. I'm not sure that US Steel could sell their ticker and only their ticker if they wanted to. The closest precedent I can find is Sears and Sprint.
Sears merged with K-Mart, and in the process gave up the S stock ticker. Wikipedia says "The new company started trading on the NASDAQ stock exchange as SHLD; Sears sold its single-letter ticker symbol 'S' in the New York Stock Exchange that it had held since 1910 to Sprint Corporation." But the source that Wikipedia cites doesn't mention Sprint. I can't find any evidence that Sprint paid Sears any money for the privilege of having the S ticker.
If US Steel merged or went bankrupt, then Twitter could get the X ticker without buying US Steel. Otherwise? I think they'd have to buy the company if they wanted the ticker.
More information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ticker_symbol#Single-letter_NYSE_ticker_symbols
@Nick332 Amazing research, Manifold need more comments like this. Just sent you a Mana bounty!
Buying US Steel to have the X stock ticker would require that X be a public company. I suspect that Elon would not like the lack of control that comes with Twitter being a public company. For example, public shareholders can file lawsuits if a company director or officer says something that turns out to be false. For that reason, all of their statements tend to be carefully lawyered. Elon likes speaking off the cuff about Twitter and its future plans.
US Steel has a market cap of $6.8 billion, so this would be an expensive purchase at a time when Elon is trying to make Twitter profitable.