Elon Musk wants the lawsuit that Twitter is filing against him over the cancelled acquisition to be postponed to next year. Twitter wants the case to start as early as September, but Musk does not want to appear in court before February.
According to Musk’s lawyers, that delay is necessary because it involves complex burden of proof. According to Musk, Twitter’s request to deal with the matter quickly is “the latest tactic to disguise the truth about spam accounts,” which would follow after ” months of slowing down and obscuring.”
Musk called off the acquisition of Twitter last week, but the company still wants to force the billionaire through the court to the acquisition for the agreed 44 billion dollars.
According to Twitter, Musk violated the terms of the acquisition agreement. Musk says Twitter has made “misleading statements” about the percentage of spam accounts on the platform.
Twitter says that fake and spam accounts make up only 5 percent of all accounts on the platform, but according to Musk, the share of fake accounts, so-called bots, is many times greater. Musk’s lawyers say mountains of data need to be investigated to substantiate the claim in court.
The percentage of real users can affect the profitability of Twitter, because spam accounts do not click on ads. The lawsuit between Musk and Twitter is ” one of the biggest legal confrontations in the history of Wall Street.”
Twitter says it has tried to answer Musk’s many requests for details about the bots, but Musk would not have attended meetings and briefings. The billionaire has shown the company “contempt” and his exit strategy is “a model of hypocrisy and bad faith,” according to the indictment.
The question is whether the issue about the fake accounts is sufficient to be able to get out under the terms of the takeover agreement. Legal experts doubt that. The judges in the US state of Delaware, where the lawsuit has been filed, previously set the bar very high if intended buyers of companies wanted to cancel their deals.
Musk also argues that Twitter has not adhered to its normal business practices since the acquisition deal. The company imposed a staffing freeze and fired key managers. The deal also said Musk would have to pay $ 1 billion if he does not pursue the acquisition. Musk is the richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of $ 219 billion.
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