Twitter refuses Elon Musk’s new $44 billion takeover deal, Musk’s lawyers say

On October 7, a Delaware Chancery Court judge ruled that Tesla CEO Elon Musk has until October 28 to complete his acquisition of Twitter if he wants to avoid a trial. In a new twist, Twitter is now refusing Elon Musk’s new $44 billion takeover deal, Musk’s lawyers said in a statement on the same day of the judge’s ruling.

Many are speculating that Twitter probably does not want Elon in control of Twitter for the upcoming mid-term elections.

Elon Musk accuses Twitter of failing to accept his restored offer to purchase the social media platform at the original price of $54.20 per share. https://t.co/I7cYY9yhhi

— ABC News (@ABC) October 10, 2022

In a court filing, Musk’s attorneys said: “Twitter will not take yes for an answer. Astonishingly, they have insisted on proceeding with this litigation, recklessly putting the deal at risk and gambling with their stockholders’ interests.”

“Twitter offered Mr. Musk billions off the transaction price. Mr. Musk refused because Twitter attempted to put certain self-serving conditions on the deal. Any statement to the contrary is a lie,” Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, said in a statement.

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

— 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.