Elon Musk must complete Twitter $44 billion takeover deal by October 28 to avoid trial, judge rules

A Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled Thursday that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has until October 28 to complete his acquisition of Twitter if he wants to avoid a trial, granting Musk a slight reprieve.

On Tuesday, Musk shocked the world after he announced he was ready to proceed with the $44 billion takeover deal to end all litigation in order to close the deal. But Twitter refused to oblige.

In a court filing on Thursday, Musk’s side said Twitter should drop the court date scheduled for Oct. 17, so that the necessary financing can be pulled together to wrap up the acquisition by Oct. 28.

“Twitter will not take yes for an answer,” the filing says. “Astonishingly, they have insisted on proceeding with this litigation, recklessly putting the deal at risk and gambling with their stockholders’ interests.”

But Musk’s legal team argued that the trial would distract his team from securing the financing necessary to close the deal.

As we reported on August 10, Musk sold $7 billion worth of Tesla shares, citing the chance of a forced Twitter deal. Musk’s action to sell Tesla shares contradicted the statement he made just less than four months ago when he said on social media that he had “no further TSLA sales planned” after April 28.

Defending his decision to sell another share of Tesla, Musk said the funds could be potentially used to finance a potential Twitter deal if he loses a legal battle with the social media platform.

On April 25, Twitter agreed to sell the company to Elon Musk for $44 billion. Under the terms of the agreement, Twitter stockholders will receive $54.20 in cash for each share of Twitter common stock that they own upon closing the proposed transaction.

The purchase price represents a 38% premium to Twitter’s closing stock price on April 1, 2022, which was the last trading day before Mr. Musk disclosed his approximately 9% stake in Twitter. Musk needed to use his Tesla stock to raise $21 billion in equity to fund his takeover of the social media giant.

Meanwhile, in a tweet on Tuesday, Musk explained how Twitter would fit into his new plan for a new “everything app” called “X.”

“Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app,” Musk tweeted.

Buying Twitter is an accelerant to creating X, the everything app

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 4, 2022

Some have speculated that Musk might build the X app on X.com, a domain name he acquired from PayPal in the Summer of 2017.