Elon Musk said on Saturday his planned $44 billion takeover of Twitter should go ahead if the company can confirm some details about how it measures whether user accounts are “spam bots” or real ones. people.
The billionaire and Tesla CEO tried to walk away from his April deal to buy the social media company, leading Twitter to sue him last month to complete the acquisition. Musk counterattacked, accusing Twitter of misleading his team about the true size of its user base and other issues he said amounted to fraud and breach of contract.
Both sides are heading to trial in October in a Delaware court.
“If Twitter simply provides its method of sampling 100 accounts and how they are confirmed to be real, the deal should continue on the original terms,” Musk tweeted early Saturday. “However, if their filings with the SEC turn out to be materially false, that should not be the case.”
Twitter declined to comment on Saturday. The company has repeatedly disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission an estimate that less than 5% of user accounts are fake or spam, with a warning that it could be higher. Musk waived his right to further due diligence when he signed the April merger agreement.
Twitter argued in court that Musk was deliberately trying to frustrate the deal because market conditions have deteriorated and the acquisition no longer serves its interests. In a court filing on Thursday, he describes his counterclaims as a make-believe story “contradicted by evidence and common sense.”
“Musk invents representations that Twitter has never made and then tries to use, selectively, the extensive confidential data provided to him by Twitter to ward off a violation of these alleged representations,” the company’s attorneys wrote.
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