Elon Musk blows up $44b Twitter deal

After months of speculation, Elon Musk is ending his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter, though it might not be that easy

In what might be the most expensive case of buyers remorse the world has ever seen, Elon Musk is backing out of his deal to buy Twitter.

But Twitter’s board chair Bret Taylor said the company is still committed to closing the deal at the agreed-upon price and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the agreement.

In the letter, disclosed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Skadden Arps attorney Mike Ringler said that “Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations.”

Spam accounts

Musk has previously said he wanted to test Twitter’s claims that about 5% of its active users are spam accounts.

Twitter continually denied this to be true.

“Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information,” Ringler claimed. “Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information.”

“While this analysis remains ongoing, all indications suggest that several of Twitter’s public disclosures regarding its mDAUs are either false or materially misleading,” Ringer alleged.

“Despite public speculation on this point, Mr. Musk did not waive his right to review Twitter’s data and information simply because he chose not to seek this data and information before entering into the Merger Agreement,” Ringer added.

“In fact, he negotiated access and information rights within the Merger Agreement precisely so that he could review data and information that is important to Twitter’s business before financing and completing the transaction.”

Twitter shares were down about 6% after hours on Friday.

While Musk is now officially seeking to walk away from the deal, this saga is likely far from over.