It’s a titanic battle that will have major implications for mergers and acquisitions in the future. World’s Richest Man and CEO of Tesla (TSLA) – Get Tesla Inc. The report abruptly withdrew its $44 billion bid to acquire the microblogging site it defines as the town square of our time. Twitter took legal action to get Musk to honor his commitment. So it’s no surprise that the two rivals are bringing out heavy artillery to destabilize the other. The battle is primarily mental. They need to send messages to the opponent to show them that they are ready to do anything to cause strikes that would prevent them from getting up.
Twitter wants a trial by mid-September
It was Twitter that struck first, filing its lawsuit on July 12, just three days after Musk’s retirement, in Delaware’s Chancery Court. And in this document, the platform used the tweets of the capricious businessman. The icing on the cake, the social network is demanding justice for a speedy trial. The platform is asking for the trial to be held in mid-September because the merger agreement between the two parties stipulates that if it is not finalized before October 24, either party can terminate it for free. “Defendants’ ability to terminate the agreement prior to the potential fall date of October 24, 2022 is extremely limited and carefully limited,” Twitter said in its lawsuit, which can be found here. “There is no right for defendants to terminate the proceeding unless there is a breach material enough to cause a closing condition to fail which, after due notice, either cannot be cured or is not cured within 30 days of such notice .” “Twitter has suffered and will continue to suffer irreparable harm as a result of the defendants’ violations,” the platform said.
Musk wants to start testing in 2023
Musk did not immediately respond. The billionaire let a few days pass and just went on the counterattack. In their response to Twitter’s complaint, Musk’s lawyers ask that the trial not be held until February 13, 2023. “Plaintiff’s proposed schedule would seriously prejudice defendants by depriving them of a meaningful opportunity to discover, conduct expert analysis and present their case,” the billionaire’s attorneys wrote in their motion, which you can read in full here. Scroll to continue “The only relevant date is the off-date for the debt financing, April 25, 2023. Therefore, the defendants respectfully request a trial on or after February 13, 2023, an extremely fast timeline for a case of this enormous magnitude that it provides the court’s time for a reasoned hearing before the true out of date,” they argued. In his letter withdrawing his proposed acquisition of Twitter, Musk accused the social network’s management of lying about the number of spam bots, or fake accounts, on the platform. Twitter has always estimated that fake accounts represent less than 5% of its users. Musk estimates this figure to be at least 20%. “The core controversy about fake and spam accounts is fundamental to the value of Twitter. It is also highly in-depth and expert, requiring significant time to discover. Twitter is a social media platform whose key performance metric they state they are monetized daily active users (“mDAU”), Musk’s team said in its 16-page motion filed July 15. They continued: “Extreme dispatch is also unwarranted because any urgency stems from plaintiff’s strategic delay,” the billionaire’s team said. “Had Twitter either promptly complied with its contractual obligations or notified the defendants that it would not, this dispute would have matured in early May.” “The plaintiff’s attempt to impose “the burdens of speedy procedure on the defendants and on the court cannot be reconciled with [its] failure to proceed with arrogance.” A hearing before a judge is scheduled for July 19. This hearing will decide when the trial will take place. On a lighter note, the mogul feels that Twitter has no sense of humor. “With the sense of humor of a bot, Twitter claims that Musk is damaging the company with tweets like a Chuck Norris meme and an emoji. Twitter ignores that Musk is its second largest shareholder with a much larger financial stake than the entire Twitter’s board of directors,” Musk’s lawyers said.
