Elon Musk Terminates $44bn Twitter Deal
Tesla Chief Executive, Elon Musk, said on Friday he was terminating his $44 billion deal for Twitter Inc. shares, citing a material breach of multiple provisions of the agreement, which includes higher numbers of fake accounts.
Reacting to the development, shares of the social media network reacted negatively, losing 5% on Friday in a single-day transaction as market players see the company as facing a bleak future.
Musk said in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that Musk was terminating his acquisition plans due mostly to an inability to come to a resolution over the matter of Twitter’s number of fake, spam or bot accounts.
Tesla Chief has argued for weeks that Twitter was able to fully confirm that the number of such accounts equalled less than 5% of the company’s total user base. READ: Elon Musk Becomes Twitter’s Largest Shareholder
“Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information,” said Musk’s representatives in their SEC filing.
“Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information.”
Twitter shares fell more than 5% in Friday’s regular trading session, to end the week at $36.81–or more than 31% less than the $54.20-a-share price of Musk’s original buyout agreement in April.
Following Musk’s termination announcement, Twitter’s share fell more than 6% in Friday’s after-hours trading session. And there could be more blood spilled when U.S. stock markets open on Monday. # Elon Musk Terminates $44bn Twitter Deal
