by Anirban Sen and Tom Hals
(Reuters) – Elon Musk has finally decided to stick with his takeover bid for Twitter at the original price of $44 billion (44.13 billion euros), a financial notice published on Tuesday shows, which should end a battle judicial between the businessman and the social network which was about to lead to a trial.
The Tesla founder and chief executive, considered the world’s richest man, pledged in April to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share and delist it before backtracking a few weeks later by denouncing the opacity of the social network on the number of its fake email accounts.
He then claimed that the number of these “bots” was much higher than Twitter’s claims that they represent less than 5% of the total number of its users, from which the company’s value is estimated.
Refusing this volte-face, Twitter launched legal proceedings to try to force the businessman to honor his commitment and a trial was to open on October 17 in Delaware to settle their dispute.
Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter on Monday in which he expressed his intention to complete his takeover offer under the initial terms on condition that the Delaware justice suspends the legal proceedings. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that such a letter had been received.
A source close to Twitter’s legal team told Reuters that at a hearing on Tuesday morning, the judge handling the case asked both sides to appear before her again in the evening.
We do not immediately know exactly the reasons that pushed Elon Musk to backtrack.
After this new reversal of Elon Musk, first reported by Bloomberg, Twitter action soared to end on a jump of more than 22% to 52.0 dollars. On the other hand, the title Tesla, manufacturer of electric cars, sharply reduced its gains to end on an increase limited to 2.9% after having taken up to 6%.
(Reporting Nivedita Balu in Bangalore, Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware, Katie Paul in Palo Alto, California, and Anirban Sen in New York; with Diane Bartz in Washington, Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco, Sheila Dang in Dallas and Krystal Hu in New York, French version Claude Chendjou and Bertrand Boucey, edited by Nicolas Delame)
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