Back in April, renowned billionaire Elon Musk announced that he would buy Twitter for $44 billion. However, the deal was put on hold a month later due to a number of disagreements. Now, Elon Musk appears to have officially backed out of the Twitter deal as he has officially notified the company that he will no longer be acquiring it.
According to Bloomberg, Musk sent a letter to Twitter on Friday confirming that he was “terminating the merger agreement” with the company. He also said that Twitter “failed to fulfill its contractual obligations.” As a result, the billionaire will no longer acquire Twitter.
Background to the Twitter Acquisition Deal
Before Elon Musk confirmed his intention to buy Twitter, he had already invested almost $3 billion in the social media platform, which gave him about 10% of the company’s shares. A few weeks later, Twitter accepted Musk’s offer for a deal that was due to close later this year.
However, shortly after the deal was announced, most of the reactions to the news were not entirely positive, with Musk always criticizing the platform for not allowing “absolute freedom of speech.” The billionaire used his Twitter profile to attack the company’s employees and even claimed he would issue verified badges to all people who presented their identification documents.
Here is what Elon Musk said then:
I have invested in Twitter because I believe in its potential to become a platform for free speech around the world, and I believe that free speech is a public imperative for a functioning democracy.
But things didn’t go well between Elon Musk and Twitter. The billionaire suspended the deal because he was unhappy with the amount of spam and fake accounts on Twitter.
At the same time, some reports suggested that Musk was just an excuse not to buy the platform anymore. Some felt that Musk could not afford the acquisition, while others suggested that he was trying to drive down the cost of Twitter in order to pay a lower price for the company.
What Twitter Says
The original deal included a $1 billion fine if Musk backed out of the deal, but now it seems Twitter wants to go a different route.
Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor said in a statement that the company’s board is “committed to closing the deal” on the original terms and that it will take legal action to enforce the merger deal. In other words, Twitter will sue Elon Musk to force him to buy the company, as he promised.
Twitter’s board intends to close the deal at the price and terms agreed with Mr. Musk and plans to take legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident that we will win in the Delaware Court of Chancery.
— Bret Taylor (@btaylor) July 8, 2022
At this point, it’s unclear what happens next – and it’s likely to take a long time for this story to wrap up.
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