Akinwande Soji-Ojo
The billionaire founder of Tesla Inc., Elon Musk, has revealed that he is terminating his $44 billion Twitter deal, saying the social media company had failed to provide information about fake accounts on the platform.
According to Reuters, Musk disclosed this on Friday.
The development comes after Twitter allowed Musk access to its “firehose”, a repository of raw data on hundreds of millions of daily tweets, last month.
In a filing, Musk’s lawyers said Twitter had failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information on fake or spam accounts on the platform, which is fundamental to the company’s business performance.
In a bid to privatise the microblogging platform, the billionaire had offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion in April.
He later agreed to acquire the platform for $44 billion.
But after several internal turmoils that trailed the billionaire’s planned buyout of the company, Musk decided to soft-pedal on his acquisition bid, citing fake accounts on the platform.
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5 percent of users,” Musk had tweeted.
However, Twitter’s chairman, Bret Taylor, said that the board planned to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.
“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk…,” he wrote on the microblogging platform.
