Elon Musk is formally trying to end his bid to buy Twitter. After hinting heavily that he no longer wanted the company in tweets attacking Twitter over its bot calculations and an ominous story this week reflecting his thinking in The Washington Post, Musk’s legal team is taking steps to terminate his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter.
“Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement, and is likely to suffer a Company Material Adverse Effect,” Musk’s lawyers wrote in a letter to Twitter’s Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde.
Musk points to his repeated unsubstantiated claims that Twitter is likely misleading investors and users about the number of automated accounts on its platform, which the company has long estimated to be under 5 percent. Musk had no apparent qualms with Twitter’s bot count prior to inking the deal and actually mentioned that he planned to take on the platform’s spam problem as the company’s new owner.
The story is developing…