While the Elon Musk vs. Twitter trial (was) set to begin on 17th October, Mr. Musk has set out on the road to buy Twitter again and people are guessing that this time it’s for real. This decision could be because of the initial setbacks the Tesla Head faced indicating his chances to win the court case are slim.
Amidst the speedy approach of the trial, Twitter received a letter from Musk’s representatives stating that he tends to move forward with the deal i.e. to buy Twitter at $54.20 per share. This news resulted in skyrocketing Twitter shares by 23% on 5th October.
The Musk-Twitter battle revolved around the story that Twitter claimed the number of bot accounts on the platform was less than 5% and Elon Musk didn’t believe it. Musk alleged that around 20% of Twitter’s users consisted of fake or bot accounts. Numerous people joined this battle and while the trial was nearly approaching, a couple of revelations from Musk’s side suggested that he got cold feet before the deal.
The court also previously published conversations that Elon Musk had about the deal and it clearly suggested that he was skeptical about buying the company because of the Russia-Ukraine War and the unstable global economic situation.
According to the notice filed with the SEC, Musk is ready to move forward with the deal, “provided that the Delaware Chancery Court enter an immediate stay of the action, Twitter vs. Musk, et al. and adjourn the trial and all other proceedings.” Meaning, he will buy the company only if the lawsuit is halted. Musk, not so enthusiastically, also tweeted that buying Twitter is a part of creating ‘X, the everything app’, something that might make the headlines once this gets settled.
Another interesting thing to note in the recent developments is that Musk did not try to negotiate the initial amount at which he agreed to buy Twitter at all. This could be because Twitter’s position was strong or maybe if the court would have ordered Musk to do so, he might have ended up paying more than that. In whichever case, it looked pretty bad for Musk. Twitter also wanted to proceed with the trial because it doesn’t trust Elon Musk anymore. In another filing, the company said he spent months delaying and derailing the deal and this delay could buy him more time to do it even further.
The court has granted Musk until 28th October to come up with the funds for the deal to go through, otherwise, the case will proceed in court. There could be more to come to this saga or maybe Elon will finally sign the deal, we’ll only know once the papers have been signed, the money paid and the court has passed the judgment.