UPDATE: Twitter has confirmed it intends to close the deal to sell the company to Elon Musk for the agreed price of $54.20 per share.
In a tweet from the Twitter Investor Relations account, the company acknowledged the letter from music, which was also sent to the SEC in the United States.
Original story continues below…
Elon Musk’s protracted, proposed Twitter takeover may be back on, according to a report from Bloomberg News on Tuesday.
According to a source of the business-centric publication, Musk wrote to Twitter offering to purchase the company for the price of $54.20 per share.
That’s the same price he proposed and agreed with Twitter shareholders earlier this year, before backing out of the deal valued at $44 billion overall. Twitter shares shot up as high 18% upon the publication of the report before trading was briefly halted.
The reported move from Musk comes amid a pending legal trial Musk is facing for withdrawing from the deal. Musk had claimed Twitter had misrepresented the number of bots compared with real users of the platform, causing the social network to sue the Tesla CEO in order to enforce the deal.
In July, Twitter said that Musk had acted in “bad faith” and accused him of buyer’s remorse once the US stock market had started a downturn this summer. That trial was due to commence on October 17.
Given shareholders have already approved the deal and are suing to ensure the original agreement is honoured, the reported new offer from Musk could see the legal action go away, and the deal go through.
However, given the previous back and forth over the matter, and Musk’s often erratic statements, it would be naive to assume anything at this point. We’ll be following developments closely, but at the time of writing neither Twitter nor Musk had commented on the report of a renewed offer to take over the social network.
Musk has been vocal about his desire for Twitter to become a free speech haven and the town square on the internet where discussion and ideas can be expressed liberally. Bans, under Elon Musk, would become a last resort.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
