Twitter vows to sue Elon Musk

After Elon Musk sent notice the $44 billion deal was off, Twitter said it would enforce it in court

Twitter will sue in Delaware to enforce the $44 billion merger agreement, the social media company’s board chairman said on Friday, after Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced he was backing out, citing misleading information about the number of bot and spam accounts on the platform.

“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement,” tweeted Bret Taylor, the current chairman of the Twitter board. “We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

After initially opposing Musk’s buyout offer, in late April Twitter agreed on the sale at $54.20 per share. Musk put the deal on hold three weeks later, however, claiming that Twitter was stonewalling his requests for information about inauthentic accounts on the platform. According to Musk, those amounted to far more than 5% that Twitter had reported in federal filings, which would directly impact advertising revenue projections spelled out in the deal.

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Twitter “failed or refused” to provide the requested information and either ignored Musk’s requests, “rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified,” or claimed to comply while giving Musk “incomplete or unusable information,” according to the letter sent by Musk’s lawyers attempting to call off the deal.

Twitter stock was trading at $36.91 at market close on Friday, crashing to just over $34 upon Musk’s announcement but rebounding to $34.88 on word of the counter-suit.