Twitter sues Elon Musk after entrepreneur pulls out of $44 billion takeover bid

Twitter is suing Elon Musk after the billionaire announced last week that he was walking away from his proposed $44bn (£37bn) takeover of the social media platform.

Back in April, it was announced that the Tesla founder and entrepreneur had seemingly acquired the social media platform for approximately $44billion (£34.5b), per The Independent.

His offer was initially turned down by Twitter, which put a “poison pill” measure in place to stop a takeover attempt by Musk. However, the two parties later entered talks before the deal entered its final stages of negotiations.

In a letter to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk’s representatives wrote: “Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement,” and “appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement.”

They added: “Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr Musk incomplete or unusable information.”

As per Sky News, the terms seemingly required Musk to pay a $1bn (£830m) break-up fee if the transaction isn’t completed.

Now Twitter has asked a Delaware court to order Musk to complete the merger at the agreed $54.20 per Twitter share.

Twitter has filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery to hold Elon Musk accountable to his contractual obligations.

— Bret Taylor (@btaylor) July 12, 2022

“Musk refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests,” Twitter said in its suit. “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.”

Twitter chairman Bret Taylor tweeted on Tuesday (July 12): “Twitter has filed a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery to hold Elon Musk accountable to his contractual obligations.” Musk tweeted, seemingly in response on the same day, “Oh the irony lol”.

Elsewhere, Donald Trump called out Musk at a recent rally, calling the tech mogul a “bullshit artist”.

“I tell you what – Elon… Elon is not gonna buy Twitter!” Trump told the audience after mistakenly calling the Space X founder and ex-partner of Grimes “Leon”. “Where did you hear that before? From me. From me.”

Trump continued: “Nah, he’s got himself a mess. You know, he said the other day, ‘Oh, I’ve never voted for a Republican.’ I said, ‘I didn’t know that, he told me he voted for me.’ So he’s another bullshit artist, but he’s not gonna be buying it. He’s not gonna be buying it. Although he might later, who the hell knows what’s gonna happen. He’s got a pretty rotten contract. I looked at his contract, not a good contract. But he’s not…Sign up for Truth.”

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