Twitter sues Elon Musk for attempting to back out of $44 billion buyout deal
Twitter is suing Elon Musk to force the Tesla and SpaceX CEO to complete his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company. The New York Times reports Twitter filed a complaint on Tuesday with the Chancery Court in Delaware alleging the billionaire wrongfully broke his agreement to purchase the platform. In April, Musk announced he was willing to buy Twitter for $54.20 per share, a proposal Twitter accepted less than two weeks later. Since then, the two have gone back and forth in public spat over the number of fake accounts on Twitter.
It all started in May when Musk said the deal was "temporarily on hold" while his team worked to confirm fake and spam accounts represented less than five percent of Twitter's total userbase as the company has consistently claimed. Less than a month later, Musk threatened to back out of the agreement, claiming Twitter had committed a "material breach" of their merger agreement by refusing to disclose enough information about the platform's bot problem. Twitter responded by giving Musk full access to its "firehose" of internal data, a move that did not appease the billionaire.
"Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk way," Twitter said in its filing.
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[original story: Engadget]