Quelle surprise, Elon Musk is now trying to pull out of his deal to purchase Twitter. Again, he signed a contract to buy Twitter as-is. He did not do any due diligence when he made a bid to purchase Twitter, nor did he seek out any additional information when he agreed to the $1 billion “breakup clause” if he somehow wanted to weasel out of the deal. Since agreeing to purchase Twitter, Musk has spent the past two months trying to find excuses for why the deal should fall through. He’s complained repeatedly about spam and bots, and he claims Twitter has lied to him about those issues. Industry watchdogs believe that despite his net worth on paper, Musk cannot actually afford to drop $44 billion on a social media company, or rather Musk can’t afford to own Tesla AND Twitter. In any case, it is all happening now. Musk is in breach of contract and Twitter is taking him to court.
Elon Musk moved Friday afternoon to terminate his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter — the latest twist in a whirlwind process in which the billionaire Tesla CEO became the company’s biggest shareholder, turned down a board seat, agreed to buy the social media platform and then started raising doubts about going through with the deal. The next chapter in the saga is almost certain to be a court battle.
A lawyer representing Musk claimed in a letter to Twitter’s top lawyer that he is ending the deal because Twitter (TWTR) is “in material breach of multiple provisions” of the original agreement, which was signed in April, according to a regulatory filing Friday evening.
Musk has for weeks expressed concerns, without any apparent evidence, that there are a greater number of bots and spam accounts on the platform than Twitter has said publicly. Analysts have speculated that the concerns may be an attempt to create a pretext to get out of a deal he may now see as overpriced, after Twitter shares and the broader tech market have declined in recent weeks. Tesla (TSLA) stock, which Musk was planning to rely on in part to finance the deal, has also declined sharply since he agreed to the deal.
“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 board chair Bret Taylor said in a tweet Friday, echoing earlier statements by the company that it planned to follow through with the deal. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”
[From CNN]
Keep in mind that Musk made his bid (of $44 billion) when Twitter’s stock price was pretty high. The stock price has dipped significantly in recent months, so Musk would be overpaying for a company which he (already) cannot afford. He can’t even put Twitter on layaway, lol. Anyway, the way I see it is that Musk, a complete idiot, thought it would cool to buy Twitter and everyone would say “omg, he’s such an iconoclast, he’s so important” and instead, everybody just complained about how he’s an awful, MAGA-adjacent, racist douchebag. Then all of his dirty secrets started coming out, because that’s what happens when you try to buy and ruin one of the most popular social media sites in the world.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.
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