Elon Musk sued by Twitter to stick to $44B deal
The social media platform has sued Elon Musk after reports that he is stepping away from the deal due to a lack of disclosed information on spam bots on Twitter.
Social media platform Twitter has filed a complaint against Elon Musk for withdrawing his $44 billion bid to purchase the company earlier this month. The complaint states that Musk believes he is free to ignore contracts, "unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law."
According to Reuters, Twitter's complaint comes in response to Musk's formal filing last week stating that he would be withdrawing his bid for the company over concerns that Twitter was not sharing enough data with him about the number of spam bots on the platform. Twitter contends that this is a false "pretext" to cover up Musk's real reasons for walking away from the deal.
Twitter's complaint claims that Musk's real reasons lie with the downturn in tech stock markets since the deal was first announced. Musk's primary source of wealth comes from his shares in Tesla, whose stock is down around 30 percent from the date of purchase bid. It closed on Tuesday at $699.21 per share.
In addition to claiming that Musk has lied about his reason to walk away from the deal, Twitter also claimed that he has a "long list" of violations as agreed upon in the merger agreement. This includes disparaging the company publicly with his tweets.
Additionally, Twitter claims that his secret accumulation of the company's share between January and March was done without proper disclosure. Moreover, it also claimed to have not shared more internal information with Musk in the fear that he would attempt to use the data to launch his own platform after walking away from the Twitter deal.
Twitter's complaint forms a picture of its dealings with Musk, and how it believes the multi-billionaire has acted in bad faith, ignoring contracts and the law.
"Musk apparently believes that he, unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law, is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away," said the complaint.
In a separate filing, Twitter has asked the court for a four-day trial in mid-September to resolve this issue. "We will prove our position in court and we believe we will prevail," Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal wrote in an internal memo seen by Reuters.
Edited by Megha Reddy