Shareholders of the reported companies that were interested in Twitter are to blame for the social networking service not being bought, according to activist investor and Corvex Management founder Keith Meister on Wednesday.
Meister, who has also worked closely with billionaire Carl Icahn, made his comments as a guest host on CNBC's "Fast Money: Halftime Report." He said Twitter's story is a great example of active investing.
"Twitter would have been bought by Salesforce, or Twitter would have been bought by Disney or any one of the number of suitors who supposedly looked at it over the last month had it not been for the shareholders of those companies saying, 'What are you doing? Why go spend $20 billion dollars to buy this?'" he said.
Last month, sources told CNBC that Twitter had received expressions of interest from several technology and media companies, which included Google and Salesforce and later Disney. Eventually, each company bowed out of the bid process.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, whose company had been seen as the most likely suitor, told the Financial Times last week that Twitter "wasn't the right fit."
Meister said what really happened was management had an active dialogue with its shareholders and they listened. "We've gone to a market where boards and managements care more about what their owners think. That's a really good thing," he said.
He later continued, "I guess you can also even give Twitter some props, because it appears their board was willing, ready and able to do the right thing for shareholders, if there had been a bid. The reality is there wasn't."
Meister continued to compliment the social media platform, calling it a "tremendously valuable asset."
— CNBC's David Faber and Anita Balakrishnan contributed to this report.