Elon Musk leaves purchase negotiations on Twitter and the social network promises legal battle | technology

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In a statement, the Twitter He said the company would go to court to enforce the deal signed with Musk.

It is announced that the billionaire is out of business Three months after arriving at a He woke up With Twitter’s board of directors To buy the social network for $44 billion (About R$231 billion at Friday’s quote.)

The world’s richest man has been asking the platform about the number of fake accounts and spam, and has already threatened to back out of the purchase if he can’t do his own analysis. The social network says so Fake profiles account for less than 5% From 229 million users.

But Musk says his partial analysis of the data provided by the company shows the number is higher.

“Mask’s advisors’ preliminary analysis of the information Twitter has provided to date makes Musk strongly believe that the protection of fake accounts and spam included in the number of reported users is well above 5%,” the billionaire’s lawyers said in a statement. to the SEC on Friday.

In May, he even stated that Suspicious accounts can account for 20% of the Twitter user base.

The new document notes that Twitter has not provided all the data that, in Musk’s assessment, would be necessary to conclude the negotiations.

The letter reads: “Twitter has failed to meet its contractual obligations. For approximately two months, Musk has sought the data and information necessary to “make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake accounts or spam on the Twitter platform.”

He continued, “Twitter has failed or refused to provide this information. Sometimes Twitter ignored Musk’s requests, sometimes denied them for seemingly unjustified reasons, and sometimes claimed compliance by providing Musk with incomplete or unusable information.”

Analysts have suggested that Musk’s questioning about the number of suspicious Twitter accounts is a possibility Billionaire trying to renegotiate or even walk away from the deal.

He announced the matter on Twitter himself and when the CEO of the social network said, Parag AgrawalHe defended the company in a thread of tweets, Musk responded with an expressive poo.

• Musk has been sued by Twitter contributors for market manipulation of public data

The agreement specifies that Musk should pay a $1 billion fine (R$5.2 billion) if there is a breach of contract or if the transaction becomes a legal dispute. The company may also be required to pay the same termination fee to the billionaire in specific circumstances.

After announcing the withdrawal of rocket company owner SpaceX and electric car maker Tesla, Twitter promised a legal battle to get the deal done.

“The Twitter Board of Directors is committed to closing the transaction at the price and terms agreed with Mr. Musk and plans to take legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in Delaware Chancery Court.” The company stated.

Shares of the social network fell 5% late Friday afternoon, on the New York Stock Exchange.

Controversy over fake accounts

Indentation has been in the works for quite some time.. On May 13, Musk went so far as to say the deal was temporarily suspendedclaiming that Twitter failed to justify His requests to learn more about the abundance of fake accounts and spam on the social network.

The announcement caused the company’s shares to fall about 20% in negotiations before the opening of the New York Stock Exchange.

in June, He again threatened to undo the purchasefor the same reason.

But Musk said he did not think the company’s “lax testing methodologies” were sufficient and wanted to conduct his own analysis. Therefore, I requested data from the social network.

According to the settlement statement, Musk’s first request was made to Twitter about the spread of fake accounts or spam on the platform on May 9.

The billionaire claims that he made repeated attempts to obtain data, but received only incomplete data from the platform.