Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, recently spoke at an event hosted by the Institute of International Finance in Washington, D.C., and touched on many different topics related to business and finance, including artificial intelligence, economics and blockchain technology. But it was Dimon’s comments about Tesla and Twitter that received the most attention in the news cycle after his speech. Here’s what he had to say about both of those topics.
Jamie Dimon seems to support Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter.
The JPMorgan CEO said , “I hope Musk cleans up Twitter,” adding that he believes Musk should investigate removing anonymous users from the website.
The comments represent Dimon’s first time addressing the Musk-Twitter agreement explicitly. The deal was resurrected last week following a new offer from the Tesla CEO to purchase the social media platform at the $54.20 per share price they originally agreed upon back in April.
In an interview with CNBC that aired on Tuesday from the JPM Techstars conference in London, Dimon shared Musk’s concerns about the prevalence of spam accounts on Twitter and suggested that the firm offer consumers greater control over its algorithmic recommendation system.
Why can’t Twitter identify you when you sign up, allowing them to remove all the automatons, emails, and other similar types of users from the public square? said Dimon.
Why are there no options for algorithms available? versus one that simply jazzes you up,” he continued.
Musk has been open about his worries about phoney Twitter accounts. Musk talked of “beating the spam bot, and authenticating all actual individuals” in a statement he released in April announcing his plan to acquire the business. He said that he wants to encourage free expression on Twitter and make Twitter’s ranking system open source.
‘Elon is very smart’
The remarks made by Dimon contradict some of the two company executives’ private disputes.
JPMorgan filed a $162.2 million lawsuit against Tesla in November 2021 for allegedly breaking the terms of a 2014 agreement involving stock warrants that Tesla had issued to the bank.
The issue in the case centred on how the bank revalued the warrants in the wake of Musk’s notorious take-private tweet in 2018.
According to a Wall Street Journal story on the lawsuit, Musk and Dimon have never gotten along. The Journal reports that the two’s attempts to mend fences failed, and JPMorgan has long distanced itself from Tesla and Musk.
But on Monday, Dimon commended Musk. “Elon is really brilliant, in my opinion,” he remarked.
Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays were among the lenders willing to offer the $13 billion in debt financing for Musk’s acquisition of Twitter; JPMorgan was conspicuously absent from the list of banks standing up to do so.
However, concerns concerning Musk’s financing have arisen as a result of a downturn in the credit markets. If banks proceed with selling the debt today, they might incur losses of $500 million or more, according to calculations by Bloomberg.
When questioned about the financial issues, Dimon responded, “They’re big boys, they can handle it.”
Whether to proceed with the acquisition has been the subject of an ongoing back-and-forth between Twitter and Musk. Musk is worried that the corporation isn’t doing enough to stop bots from manipulating the platform. Twitter claims to have told Musk the truth about how many of its users are legitimate.
The Tesla CEO and Twitter reached an agreement in April for Musk to buy the social media company for $54.20 per share. Musk made an attempt to pull out of the agreement in July, claiming concerns with the way the firm handled bots. Musk was then sued by Twitter in an effort to have him complete the transaction.
In order to resolve Musk’s attempt to stop the acquisition, Twitter and Musk were scheduled to go to court on October 17 in Delaware, unless they first struck a compromise. To complete the transaction, Musk demanded that Twitter halt its legal action against him. Twitter, however, declined to comply.
A Delaware Chancery Court judge said that Musk now has until October 28 to complete the arrangement if he wants to avoid trial, giving him a little respite on Thursday.
