Elon Musk has changed his mind again on buying Twitter and is now set to go ahead with the $44 billion USD (around $67 billion AUD) buyout of the social media platform.
The long-running saga of Musk’s attempted takeover finally seems to be approaching a conclusion following months of legal drama. Lawyers for the South African businessman confirmed in a court filing on Tuesday that Musk will buy the company after trying to extricate himself from the deal in July.
The filing confirmed that Musk had written to Twitter offering to close the deal at the original price of $54.20 USD a share. The Tesla chief executive had been set for a date in court with Twitter on 17 October, a showdown that many legal commentators predicted he would lose.
“We write to notify you that the Musk Parties intend to proceed to closing of the transaction contemplated by the April 25, 2022 merger agreement, on the terms and subject to the conditions set forth therein and pending receipt of the proceeds of the debt financing contemplated thereby,” read the notice that Musk’s lawyers filed with the Delaware Chancery court which was set to oversee the trial.
Twitter responded writing that “The intention of the company is to close the transaction” that was agreed upon during the original deal.
Twitter issued this statement about today’s news: We received the letter from the Musk parties which they have filed with the SEC. The intention of the Company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share.
— Twitter Investor Relations (@TwitterIR) October 4, 2022
Markets seemed to react positively to news of the takeover with Twitter shares climbing more than 12% to $47.93 on the New York Stock Exchange.
The controversy surrounding the deal originally emerged when Musk sued Twitter, claiming that it was low-balling the number of spam and bot accounts on the platform. He also later expanded his lawsuit to include claims from Peiter Zatko, Twitter’s former head of security, that the company was “grossly negligent in several areas of information security.”
Twitter denied it miscounted the number of spam accounts and said that Zatko’s claims were “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lack important context.”
