Elon Musk ends $44 billion deal to acquire Twitter

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk said on Friday that he was ending his $44 billion deal with Twitter, citing material breaches of several provisions of the agreement.

Twitter shares fell 6% in extended trading on Friday.

The announcement ends a saga after the world’s richest person struck a deal to acquire the social network in April, but then put the purchase on hold until Twitter proved that spam bots accounted for less than 5% of total users. .

In a filing, Musk’s lawyers said Twitter failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information about fake accounts or spam on the platform, which is critical to the company’s business performance.

Last month, Twitter allowed Musk access to its “firehose,” a raw data repository of hundreds of millions of daily tweets.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Remember the offer

In April, Elon Musk made an offer to buy Twitter. According to the document submitted to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Musk offered to buy all the shares he does not own in the company at $54.20 per share — which would take the company for granted. US$ 43.4 billion.

The Tesla CEO had sent an offer letter to Twitter, according to the document.

However, over the past month, Musk has spent weeks raising alarms that Twitter could have far more fake accounts, spam and bots than reported numbers and was already threatening to abandon his deal with the company.

Tesla’s chief executive reiterated that the issue of fake Twitter accounts was among the “unresolved” issues he would need to deal with before completing his acquisition of the social media company.