Elon Musk proposes to buy Twitter at the initial price

The parties had signed an agreement at the end of April, but in July the Tesla boss had turned around accusing Twitter of not having provided true data on spam and bots (fake accounts), the latter in his opinion higher than the 5% indicated by the platform. The company reacted by suing him in a Delaware court to force him to honor the pledge, arguing that the bot issue is a pretext to get out of an operation that Musk does not consider to be more profitable.

The first few hearings were not very encouraging for the richest man in the world. Judge Kathaleen McCormick has authorized him to use the revelations of an internal ‘mole’, former Twitter security chief Pieter Zatko, according to whom the company has deceived the American authorities even on fake accounts, one of the reasons given by the tycoon. to skip the operation. But he rejected his petition to postpone the trial because “even a four-week delay would risk doing Twitter too much damage to justify.”

In any case, Musk’s lawyers fear that, despite the ‘mole’, it would be difficult to prove the adverse material effects of his charges, which are the prerequisite for exiting the contract. The next hearing is set for October 17, but a possible agreement would prevent Musk from an uncertain legal battle in one of the most contested acquisitions in recent history. According to some experts this is a sign of weakness. “It is a clear sign that Musk recognizes that his chances of winning against the board of directors in a Delaware court are very slim and that the $ 44 billion collection is inevitable in one way or another,” he noted. ‘analyst Dan Ives de Wedbush Securities. Twitter is thus heading towards a new season, without the “censorship” disputed by Musk and with the possibility of a return of Donald Trump, after he was banned for having instigated the assault on Congress.