• The trial in which Twitter would compel Elon Musk to go through with his acquisition plans has been stayed.
• The parties have until 28th October to reach an agreement.
• Musk has now added several contingencies to the deal.

The “Will they or won’t they” saga of 2022 continues, but could see an end soon. That saga is of course the proposed acquisition of Twitter by billionaire Elon Musk.

Earlier this week Musk filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) signalling his intent to go through with the original agreement to pay $54.20 per share for Twitter. As such the fate of the trial that was set to move forward later this month was unknown.

Now, Engadget reports that Judge Kathleen McCormick has stayed the trial until 28th October. This date, reads the order, is the date the transaction is set to be finalised. However, should the transaction not be finalised by 17:00 on 28th October, a new date for a trial will be set.

While that seems simple enough, a report from Bloomberg lays out why it isn’t.

The publication reports that according to people familiar with the matter, Musk has stated that the deal is now contingent on him receiving $13 billion in debt financing. The billionaire also wants to reserve the right to sue Twitter for fraud over allegedly misleading him and other investors about the pervasiveness of bots and spam accounts.

While Musk has spent much of his acquisition dance bemoaning the bot problem on Twitter, he has said very little publicly about more pressing problems at the social network.

Last week several high-profile advertisers pulled advertising campaigns from Twitter following the discovery that these adverts were appearing alongside child sexual abuse material (CSAM). This problem is so pervasive that an internal team scrapped the idea of an Only Fans style subscription offering for Twitter as it can’t accurately detect CSAM.

There are a number of days before we reach McCormick’s deadline and given how this saga has played out so far, we’re not saying this is over until Twitter’s shareholders are paid.