Twitter to sue Elon Musk after Tesla CEO terminates $44 billion takeover deal | 10 developments
Elon Musk's decision to cancel the April deal to buy the micro-blogging platform sets the stage for an epic court battle over a billion-dollar breakup fee and other issues.
Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of Tesla and the wealthiest man in the world, announced on Friday that he was cancelling his $44 billion plan to acquire Twitter because the social media business had broken numerous merger agreement clauses.
Updates:
1) Elon Musk's lawyers stated in a regulatory filing that Twitter had failed to respond to multiple requests for information on fake or spam accounts on the platform, which is critical to the company's business performance.
2) Elon Musk's decision to cancel the April deal to buy the micro-blogging platform sets the stage for an epic court battle over a billion-dollar breakup fee and other issues.
3) Bret Taylor, Twitter's chairman, stated that the board would take legal action to enforce the merger agreement. Taylor took to Twitter and wrote that the Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction at the agreed-upon price and terms with Musk and intends to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.
4) Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, must pay a $1 billion breakup fee if the transaction is not completed.
5) Elon Musk is also being sued for allegedly manipulating Twitter's stock price to gain an escape route from his buyout bid.
6) Musk announced in May that he was putting the deal on hold until the social media company demonstrated that spam bots account for less than 5 per cent of its total users.
7) Last month, he warned Twitter that if it fails to provide him with data on spam and fake accounts, he may walk away from his deal to acquire the social media platform.
8) In response, Twitter gave Musk access to its 'firehose' raw data on hundreds of millions of daily messages. Twitter claims that by using this sensitive information, real accounts won't be mistakenly categorised as spam.
9) Twitter maintains that no more than 5 per cent of accounts are run by software rather than people, whereas Musk believes the figure is much higher.
10) Elon Musk had promised to restore free speech on the microblogging site. "I hope that even my harshest critics remain on Twitter because that is what free speech means," he tweeted in April, shortly after completing the $44 billion takeovers of Twitter.
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