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Twitter has announced that the shareholders have agreed on accepting the $44 billion acquisition offer by Elon Musk. This means that Twitter will be going against Elon Musk in a legal battle to make him close the acquisition of Twitter, as Elon has been since requesting its termination.
Elon Musk had offered to completely buy Twitter for the amount of $44 billion in April 2022. This offer from Elon Musk came as a surprise to almost everyone. He was criticized by Tesla share owners and his followers, as he had overvalued Twitter. Another reason for the criticism was Twitter's decreasing popularity, as the platform is mostly seen by social media users as kind of obnoxious.
To address this criticism, Elon Musk stated that he has several plans to make Twitter a reliable platform and make it suitable for everyone. While stating his inspiration to buy Twitter, Elon said Twitter has great potential. He also shared his vision which he will be implying once he completes Twitter’s acquisition. He said that if he owns Twitter he will make the platform open-source, will target spam and bot accounts, and will be improving free speech over Twitter. These promises made people look at this deal as a revolutionary phase for the platform. But in July, Musk announced that he is looking to pull out of the acquisition offer. To this, Twitter responded that it will sue Elon Musk if he tries to terminate the deal. Since then, Twitter was looking to get the approval of its shareholders so it can complete the acquisition formalities from its side.
Now as the Twitter shareholders have agreed to vote in favor of this acquisition, this has increased the chances of legal trouble for Elon Musk. Twitter had stated in Musk’s statement to terminate the acquisition deal that they will be settling this in court as they have a binding agreement that they will be enforcing against Elon Musk.
Elon Musk has proposed several reasons which also sound reasonable. Elon Musk was waiting for evidence that backs Twitter’s claim that the platform has less than 5% of accounts that are spam or bot accounts. In a letter that was filed to the SEC by Musk’s lawyer, he stated that Twitter has ignored and failed to provide such data which is why he is looking to terminate the deal. As per Elon, over 20% of Twitter's user base is filled with spam and bot accounts, which is 4 times higher than the number stated by Twitter.
Hence, when Twitter announced that it will be taking Elon Musk to the court for closing the acquisition deal, Musk ridiculed Twitter by posting a meme. He said along with this post that getting into the court will expose Twitter as then they will have to publish the actual number of spam, fake, and bot accounts on the platform. To this, Twitter has stated that there has not been any change from their end since the deal was sanctioned by Musk. Elon’s refusal to buy Twitter has plummeted the value of its shares by almost 7%.
Yash Ranjan09/14/2022
