Billionaire Elon Musk wants to end his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter. Musk's lawyer claimed Twitter failed to comply with its obligations in the merger ...
"Despite public speculation on this point, Mr. Musk did not waive his right to review Twitter's data and information simply because he chose not to seek this data and information before entering into the Merger Agreement," Ringer added. On the day of that announcement, the stock ended the trading day at $51.70 per share. Under the terms of the agreement, Musk agreed to pay $1 billion if he backs out. The stock has fallen considerably since the board announced it had accepted his offer to buy the company at $54.20 per share. "Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information," Ringler claimed. Musk has previously said he wanted to assess Twitter's claims that about 5% of its monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) are spam accounts.
Tesla's CEO said in a filing with the SEC that he had notified the social media company that he was walking away from the deal.
Analysts and employees warned Musk set the stage for a turbulent period, which could carry financial risks and leave workers more frustrated.
The company stressed that the firehose is not enough to understand the state of bots on the platform. A left-leaning watchdog group said Musk’s filing highlights why the deal has been fraught from the start. “It was a political firestorm that Musk inserted himself into and now there’s going to be many of twists and turns again,” Ives said. But as the stock market has been roiled by a global sell-of of tech stocks, Tesla share values plummeted in the wake of the deal. “There’s been a general lack of belief that the deal would go through as signed.” Twitter does not ban all bots, which include purposeful automated accounts, such as those that post otter pictures on the hour or the temperature in a specific location. “The best result for shareholders will be closing the deal at $54.20, even with a hostile owner.” Musk began complaining about the bot issue soon after he agreed to purchase and take the company private this spring. In a Friday evening news release, Twitter’s board threatened to “pursue legal action” to enforce the terms of the $44 billion deal Musk struck in April to buy the social network and take it private. “Is he a material kind of guy who just changed his mind?” she said. Twitter could be forced make key business metrics public, inviting questions from Wall Street about the overall health of the company, which turned its first profit in 2018 amid a major financial retooling. Legal experts say Musk’s case doesn’t meet a threshold to allow him to walk away from the deal.
Elon Musk terminated his agreement to buy Twitter Inc. on Friday, and Twitter's chairman promised a legal fight.
In a letter sent to Twitter’s TWTR chief legal officer on Friday, the Tesla Inc. TSLA and SpaceX chief executive claimed that he was ending the agreement because Twitter would not share requested information with him, and the information that was shared, he contended, had confirmed his belief that there were more bots on the service than Twitter claims in its securities filings. Elon Musk is backing out of his agreement to buy Twitter Inc., and Twitter’s chairman has already promised a legal fight.
Twitter has vowed to "pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement."
Twitter's stock value started to fall shortly after Musk raised doubts about the proposed purchase. Musk claimed, without evidence, that the platform included at least 20 percent fake or spam accounts. Musk's attorneys argued that breaking the agreement was justified, in part, because Twitter had failed to provide adequate information about the platform's process of identifying the spam accounts despite "repeated requests over the past two months."
Twitter Inc. shares dropped late on Friday after Elon Musk said he's terminating the $44 billion agreement to acquire the social media company.
Twitter shares had fallen 15% this year as of Friday’s closing price, compared with a drop of 26% for the Nasdaq 100. The news sent shares of Tesla Inc., the electric car maker that Musk leads, up as much as 3% while social media peers Snap Inc. and “Any competing bid from private equity would be at least 15-20% lower than Musk’s $44 billion offer.”