Elon Musk made the shocking announcement that his $44 billion buyout of Twitter is coming to an end.
The social network, according to the millionaire (Elon Musk), has broken numerous terms of their contract.
Tesla's CEO has regularly bemoaned Twitter's spam account count, arguing that the actual number is larger than what the social media site indicates.
And just yesterday, The Washington Post reported that Elon Musk planned to take "possibly severe measures," putting the takeover in jeopardy.
More or less from the beginning, Elon Musk's attempts to acquire Twitter were bound to failure, and the negotiations were drama-filled.
It's awkward because Elon Musk may be liable for a $1 billion termination charge because of the terms of the agreement, which stipulate that he ceded his rights to perform due diligence.
Twitter has stated repeatedly that it is committed to seeing the purchase through, despite claims from detractors that Musk has changed his mind as a result of the recent sharp decline in the company's stock price.
Twitter is presently trading at $34.65, down from Musk's first takeover offer price of $54.20, which caused the stock to drop 5.67 percent in after-hours trading.
The firm "appears to have made false and deceptive claims upon which Mr. Musk relied upon entering into the Merger Agreement,"
According to a letter to Twitter's top legal officer Vijaya Gadde.
He reiterated his assertions that, despite two months of trying, Twitter has not complied with a contractual commitment to give all data and information "for any legitimate purpose relating to the execution of the sale."
He adds: "The prevalence of fraudulent or spam accounts," referring to the topic in question.
He stated:
"Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information. 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."
The billionaire's legal team said that he was committed to establishing a link between the prevalence of spam accounts and the amount of monetizable daily active users on Twitter.
Numerous letters allegedly seeking additional information were also submitted, but the tech giant is accused of being "non-responsive," according to his lawyers, who assert that this gives him the right to end their contract.
They continued by noting that the genuine number is "wildly higher" than 5 percent and that "it looks like Twitter is drastically understating the share of spam and fraudulent accounts on its network.
They state:
"Twitter includes accounts that have been suspended — and thus are known to be fake or spam — in its quarterly mDAU count even when it is aware that the suspended accounts were included in mDAU for that quarter."
Twitter is yet to make an official statement in regards to this withdrawal by Elon musk and his legal team.
Source: Coinmarketcap
