Things are getting chaotic in the Elon Musk-Twitter (TWTR) saga after the billionaire warned that he could walk away from the $44B acquisition if the platform does not provide...
seekingalpha.com
Snapshot: It's even more interesting as Elon Musk didn't want to do any extensive due diligence when abruptly announcing the deal back in April. At the time, he wanted to complete the acquisition as soon as possible, but then slammed the brakes over the bots issue, which is not the first time the topic has surfaced. While Musk has agreed to pay $54.20 per share for Twitter (
TWTR), the company's stock price is now trading at $39.56, which is significantly lower than where things stood even several weeks ago.
"It's fairly obvious that Musk has buyer's remorse and he is trying whatever to get a reduction in price, and I think he may succeed," said Dennis Dick, a prop trader at Bright Trading.
From a legal perspective, the only way Musk could abandon the deal is a refusal from the banks to provide financing or regulators block the transaction. Lawyers for the Tesla (
TSLA) CEO may be trying to link the bots issue to his ability to secure financing, allowing him to walk away by paying a $1B breakup fee (Texas on Monday
opened a separate investigation into Twitter's alleged fake accounts based on the state's Deceptive Trade Practices Act). However, Twitter's (
TWTR) disclaimers used in its projections on spam accounts and a "specific performance" clause could give it protection against potential lawsuits, and
Musk would have to prove that he was willfully misled (which is a high legal threshold).
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