Elon Musk offered Twitter on Monday to buy the social network for the price agreed in April, according to press reports. This turnaround comes two weeks before the trial scheduled between the two parties on this eventful acquisition.
Trading in Twitter stock was suspended on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday ‘pending information’ after a Bloomberg article revealed the Tesla boss’s new takeover bid. The quotation had been suspended for the first time for 5 minutes, and the title had soared to +18%, before being stopped again, at +12.7%.
According to the economic news agency, Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter on Monday, offering to acquire the platform for $54.20 a share, the price he originally offered to the company. spring and that the board of directors had finally accepted. According to CNBC, the deal could be finalized as early as Friday or Monday.
The two parties had signed a contract at the end of April, but Elon Musk unilaterally reneged on this agreement in July. The group at the blue bird had then launched lawsuits to force him to honor his commitment, and everything indicated that he was well positioned to win.
‘Low chance of winning’
‘It’s a clear sign that Musk recognizes that his chances of winning against the board in a Delaware court are very slim and that the $44 billion buyout was going to have to happen one way or another’ , reacted the analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.
Elon Musk had bombarded Twitter with criticism before and after the takeover deal was signed, accusing the platform of censoring users and failing to sufficiently crack down on spam and fake accounts.
He justified his backtracking by saying that the proportion of automated accounts on the platform was well above the 5% figure put forward by the San Francisco company.
Security failures
Faced with Twitter’s complaint, the president of the Delaware specialized court granted the company a quick trial, while Elon Musk wanted to wait until next year and was asking for astronomical amounts of data. The trial, if maintained, should theoretically take place from October 17 to 21.
The Musk clan seemed to have gained a point when Peiter Zatko, the ex-Twitter security chief who was fired in January, accused the group of major security breaches in late August, in a report submitted to US authorities. But during preliminary hearings with the judge, his lawyers seemed to struggle to substantiate the accusations on the false accounts.
A Twitter attorney pointed to two reports by data analytics firms the businessman hired, Cyabra and CounterAction, which put the rate at 11% and 5.3%, respectively. “None of these reports even remotely support what Mr. Musk said to Twitter and to the world in his July 8 letter,” attorney Brad Wilson told a hearing.
/ATS