From Hostile Takeover To Running Short Of Excuses To Back Out, How Musk's Twitter Deal Fell Apart
It is official - the world's richest man Elon Musk won't become the owner of the microblogging platform Twitter.
Musk's team on Friday informed the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), he is terminating the deal because Twitter was in "material breach" of their agreement and had made "false and misleading" statements during negotiations.?
Twitter not providing data, says Musk
"For nearly two months, Musk has sought the data and information necessary to 'make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter's platform'," Musk's legal team wrote.
"Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information," they added.
In April, Musk had made a $44 billion offer to buy Twitter and take it private.
According to the deal, whoever was backing out of the deal was liable to pay the other party a break up fee of $1 billion.
Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor said that the company will "pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement" and feels "confident we will prevail" in court.?
Many saw the back out coming
For many, Musk backing out of the much-hyped deal did not come as a surprise as it was becoming obvious that he was dragging his feet.
Initially, it started with his team demanding more data from Twitter and then it became about spam and bot accounts.
Musk has been claiming that Twitter released misleading stats about the prevalence of spam bots on its platform.?
Musk and Twitter bots
He had put the deal on hold over the actual number of spam accounts and bots, and sought a reply from Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal.?
Twitter, on the other hand, had gone to unprecedented lengths to meet Musk's requests.
In early June, the company opened up "firehose" access to its service so that Musk could receive and analyze every tweet as it was posted.?
How it all started
Musk had in April shocked the world by offering to buy Twitter, just days after the company announced that the world's richest man had bought 9.2% of shares in the company worth around $3 billion, making him the largest shareholder.
Though Twitter was initially reluctant and even prepared a poison pill to counter Musk's hostile takeover attempt, it finally conceded.
On April 25, the Twitter board agreed to Musk's deal to buy the company for $43 billion, at $54.20 per share.
Throughout the entire episode, Musk has maintained that he had secured the funds to buy out Twitter and take it private.
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