Musk’s lawyers accused Twitter of misleading him about the nature of the company and the market. Twitter “appears to have made false and misleading statements relied upon by Mr. Musk in entering into the Merger Agreement,” the lawyers said in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The deal between Twitter and Mr. Musk included a $1 billion breakup fee, to be paid by the billionaire if the deal does not go through. However, filings from Musk’s legal team appeared to suggest he considered the deal void. However, Twitter suggested that it believed the deal still stood – and that it would require Mr Musk to continue with it. “Twitter’s board is committed to closing the transaction at the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to take legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” tweeted Brett Taylor, Twitter’s chairman. . “We are confident that we will prevail in the Delaware Court of First Instance.” Mr. Musk has repeatedly said that Twitter executives have hidden the full extent of bots and automated accounts on the platform. Twitter said they represent less than 5 percent of its active users — a number Mr. Musk said he wouldn’t believe until he could check for himself. “For nearly two months, Mr. Musk sought the data and information needed to ‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spammy accounts on the Twitter platform,’” the filing continued. “Twitter failed or refused to provide this information. Twitter has sometimes ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes denied them for reasons that seem unjustified, and sometimes claimed to comply by giving Musk incomplete or useless information.” The lawyers said Mr Musk had asked for detailed information on how Twitter detects spam and fake accounts and suspends them, as well as more details about how its daily active users operate. Almost the entire letter focused on these problems with fake and spam accounts. But he also said Twitter had changed its operations significantly since Mr Musk made the offer to buy it – pointing to the layoffs of some high-level employees in recent weeks. Musk used his own Twitter account to comment on the acquisition’s progress throughout. But the announcement came after a notable absence of updates about the deal from his account — and, on Friday, Mr Musk shared memes from Anchorman and SpongeBob SquarePants, as well as his enthusiasm for his other companies. The planned takeover of Twitter began in January, when Musk began increasing his stake in the company. In April, it was revealed that he had bought enough to become the company’s largest shareholder. Soon after, he agreed to join Twitter’s board of directors, and then promptly quit again. Instead, he made an offer to buy the entire company – and, by the end of April, Twitter had accepted. In May, however, Musk said the deal was “on hold” and linked to a report about Twitter’s revelations about fake accounts. “Twitter is temporarily trading on hold pending details that support the estimate that spam/fake accounts actually represent less than 5% of users,” he tweeted. Since then, the deal appears to have stalled, with Musk threatening to walk away and demanding more information about these fake accounts. In recent days, reports have begun to circulate that the deal may fall apart. On Friday, Musk’s lawyers then filed the letter with the SEC, addressed to Twitter’s chief legal officer, Vijaya Gadde, formally canceling the merger agreement between the billionaire and the social network. Throughout the negotiation of the deal, the stock price of both Twitter and Musk’s own Tesla fell. This led to speculation that Mr Musk could find a convenient way out of the deal, given that the terms would now require you to pay much more than Twitter’s market value.
