Comment Elon Musk is ending his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, according to the billionaire’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday. Musk’s lawyers sent a letter on Twitter saying he was “terminating their merger agreement,” according to the filing. In the letter, Musk argues that he has the right to withdraw from the deal because Twitter has not given him enough information about the company’s operations. Musk’s lawyers accused Twitter of “failing or refusing” to hand over information that would have helped Musk and his team determine the true number of bots or spam accounts on the social networking platform. “Twitter has sometimes ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes denied them for what appear to be unjustified reasons, and sometimes claimed to comply by giving Mr. Musk incomplete or useless information,” the letter states. Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter is in jeopardy Twitter chairman Brett Taylor tweeted on Friday that the company would take legal action against Musk. “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,” he wrote. “We are confident that we will prevail in the Delaware Court of First Instance.” Legal experts have said Musk can’t just back out of the deal. His agreement in April to buy the company included a commitment to go ahead with the takeover unless there was a significant change in the business, and legal experts say nothing has happened to meet that threshold. Musk had previously threatened to scuttle the deal if Twitter didn’t give it more data to run its own analysis on how many spam bots it has, while Twitter said it can’t give up personal information about its users, such as their names, emails and IP addresses, which it uses to find his own bot numbers. Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Read the letter filed by Musk’s lawyers seeking to end the $44 billion deal on Twitter In the letter, Musk accused Twitter of materially violating the terms of the agreement by making “false and misleading” statements and also cited the possibility of a “material adverse effect,” a significant change that would affect the company’s value. In short, Twitter has not provided information Mr. Musk has requested for nearly two months, despite his repeated, detailed clarifications intended to simplify Twitter’s identification, collection, and disclosure of the most relevant information sought in the original requests. of Mr. Musk. the letter said. In the letter, Musk also cited the company’s finances as a possible reason to pull out of the deal, citing the company’s “diminishing business and financial prospects” as a separate reason for ending the deal. Musk argued in the letter to the company that Twitter breached an agreement not to materially change its business after the deal was signed, firing two senior executives in May and making layoffs in its hiring team in July. Musk said he did not waive the right to do due diligence when he signed the deal and expected Twitter to be forthcoming with more information. Legal experts said that when he signed the deal, he agreed to buy the company as is. Musk shook up the social media world in April by agreeing to buy Twitter for $44 billion. He has assembled a large group of co-investors and leveraged his personal wealth to take on the debt needed to complete the deal. But immediately after his buyout was announced, a global sell-off in tech stocks eroded Musk’s net worth while making the $54 per share purchase price look like Twitter was seriously overvalued. Elon Musk says harassing Twitter staff will drive people away from the service Musk’s skeptics said he made the bots argument simply to find an excuse to get out of what he now saw as a bad deal. Musk himself knew about Twitter’s spam problem and cited it as one of the reasons he wanted to buy the company in the first place. Wall Street had been skeptical that Musk would complete the deal for months. Twitter’s stock price is about $37 today, down nearly 30 percent from the $52 it traded on the day it announced the acquisition. The filing came after the Washington Post reported Thursday that the deal was in serious jeopardy, with one of the co-investors not hearing from Musk’s team for weeks, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity to to discuss sensitive issues. . Elon Musk, the infamous Twitter troll, is now trolling Twitter itself
