Billionaire Elon Musk now wants to end his $44 billion offer to purchase Twitter, according to a letter sent by a lawyer on his behalf to the company’s chief legal officer.
Twitter’s board chair Bret Taylor said the company is still committed to closing the deal at the agreed price and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the agreement.
“We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery,” Taylor wrote.
In the letter, disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Skadden Arps attorney Mike Ringler said that “Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations.”
Ringler claimed that Twitter did not provide Musk with relevant business information he requested, as Ringler said the contract would require. Musk has previously said he wanted to assess Twitter’s claims that about 5% of its monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) are spam accounts.
“Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information,” Ringler claimed. “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.”
While Musk is now officially seeking to walk away from the deal. This saga is likely far from over.
Under the terms of the agreement, Musk agreed to pay $1 billion if he backs out.
Twitter stock has fallen considerably since the board announced it had accepted his offer to buy the company at $54.20 per share. On the day of that announcement, the stock ended the trading day at $51.70 per share. Twitter shares sat at $36.81 as of Friday’s market close.
