Well, well, well…
Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said on Friday he was terminating his $44 billion deal for Twitter Inc (TWTR.N), saying that the social media company had failed to provide information about fake accounts on the platform.
Shares of Twitter fell 6% in extended trading.
In a filing, Musk’s lawyers said Twitter had failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information on fake or spam accounts on the platform, which is fundamental to the company’s business performance.
Musk had threatened to halt the deal unless the company showed proof that spam and bot accounts were fewer than 5% of users who see advertising on the social media service.
Last month, Twitter allowed Musk access to its “firehose”, a repository of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
He got his publicity, and I still think he was shorting the stick to make money.
Good riddance.Report
He was just whittling things downReport
Is this the first time Elon has….
Oh the joke has been made 4000 times already.Report
Meh. I think he actually wanted to buy it, but the financial side didn’t work out for him, so he found a way out.Report
Elon is now going to go full Al Davis: it’s Twitter that broke the deal, and if anything they owe *him*.Report
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Specific Performance is hard to get as a remedyReport
As far as I can tell, any given lawyer would rather be working for Twitter than for Musk on this case which is one hell of an indicator.
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But Twitter is selling, RIGHT NOW, for 36.81 a share.
You have an opportunity to purchase a small lot right now and make 33% in less than a couple of months. It’s only 36,810.00 to bring home 54,200.00.
Not bad!
Note: The above is not investment advice and should not be taken as such.Report
Twitter now selling at 32.65.
It’s an opportunity to make even more money!
Note: The above is not investment advice and should not be taken as such.Report
They’ll preen and pose in a few court sessions then settle for about a third of that before discoveryReport
When I started my technical career at Bell Labs almost 45 years ago, all technical staff went through periodic training conducted by the legal staff so we understood about discovery. After all, we were part of the Bell System and we were always being sued over something. So far as I can tell, none of the techbros’ companies do that. Their lawyers must live in absolute terror of discovery.Report
I’m not sure if my employer counts as a “techbro company,” but I do work for {bigtech}. Anyway, we indeed get trained on discovery and attorney/client privilege and how to reach out to legal counsel in cases where we feel uncertain.
Of course, whether everyone in engineering follows these guidelines is unlikely, but I take it seriously.Report
Elon will wind up paying Twitter $1B for the privilege of not buying it, having likely learned nothing from this experience. Twitter returns to where it was before all of this started with a billion dollars less whatever it paid its lawyers.Report
Elon just posted this:
People are arguing over whether it’s a sign of desperation or not.
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It’s a legitimate point.Report
Failing to give him the answer he wanted doesn’t mean they failed to disclose.Report