Now that the worst game of “Will He or Won’t He” is done and Elon Musk is indeed in the camp that isn’t buying Twitter anymore, it’s time for the clean up and that starts as early as Tuesday.
At the weekend, Reuters reported that a judge will hear arguments on Tuesday for Twitter’s request for a trial. That trial would see Twitter seeking to hold Musk to his original $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter.
The session is not the trial itself, but Twitter is going to ask the judge to grant it a date for September. The session on Tuesday will be 90 minutes long.
Last week Musk killed the deal stating that Twitter had hid how many bots and fake accounts were really on its platform, made data collection incredibly difficult and withheld other pertinent information in hopes the deal would go through.
Twitter meanwhile maintains that it did everything in its power to abide by Musk’s conditions.
“Rather than bear the cost of the market downturn, as the merger agreement requires, Musk wants to shift it to Twitter’s stockholders. This is in keeping with the tactics Musk has deployed against Twitter and its stockholders since earlier this year, when he started amassing an undisclosed stake in the company and continued to grow his position without required notification. It tracks the disdain he has shown for the company that one would have expected Musk, as its would-be steward, to protect,” reads Twitter’s complaint.
“Since signing the merger agreement, Musk has repeatedly disparaged Twitter and the deal, creating business risk for Twitter and downward pressure on its share price,” it continues.
The common line of thinking regarding this deal is that Musk is going to have to show that Twitter maliciously hid vital information that could threaten the deal from him and his team.
That’s an uphill battle especially when one considers the statement above, the fact that Musk signed a binding agreement and also waived his opportunity to do due diligence.
We don’t like Musk’s odds here but of course it all depends on what Judge Kathaleen McCormick decides on those 90 minutes on Tuesday.
[Via – Engadget]
