UPDATED: Elon Musk has called the whole thing off — but Twitter isn’t done with him yet.
The mega-billionaire terminated his $44 billion offer for Twitter, notifying the company of the decision on Friday in a letter from his lawyers, according to a regulatory filing. Musk is claiming that Twitter misrepresented the scope of spam and fake accounts on the social network, saying his team’s preliminary estimates put that “wildly higher” than the sub-5% figure that Twitter has repeatedly claimed.
Twitter said it plans to sue Musk over his nixing of the deal and hold him to his $54.20-per-share deal price.
“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” Twitter chairman Bret Taylor, who is also co-CEO of Salesforce, wrote in a tweet. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”
With Musk bailing on the Twitter takeover, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX would have to pay a $1 billion breakup fee to Twitter (and he could be the target of additional litigation), unless he is able to prove Twitter significantly misled him about factors related to the company’s value.
“Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement, and is likely to suffer...
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