• Monday, 01 July 2024

Twitter sues Elon Musk in bid to force completion of $44bn takeover

Twitter sues Elon Musk in bid to force completion of $44bn takeover
Berlin, 13 July 2022 (dpa/MIA) - Twitter is taking tech billionaire Elon Musk to court in a bid to force him to complete his takeover of the site, board chair Bret Taylor announced on Tuesday. Twitter filed a lawsuit in Delaware asking the court to order the takeover be executed under the terms of the deal agreed with Musk in May, a 60-page statement of claim published by US media on Tuesday shows. Musk announced Friday that he was withdrawing from the $44-billion agreement to buy Twitter, citing unsubstantiated claims that there was a significantly higher proportion of fake accounts on Twitter than the 5% claimed by the company. Musk's lawyers argued Twitter had not fulfilled its obligations under the terms of the deal to provide Musk with the necessary data to verify the figures. Twitter rejected that claim, calling Musk's backtracking "invalid and wrongful." In the statement of claim, Twitter's lawyers said "Musk apparently believes that he ... is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away."