Musk revives $44bn bid for Twitter amid court fight

Shares in social media giant suspended and Tesla price slumps after surprise proposal to renew offer

ELON MUSK has caved to Twitter’s legal demands and revived an offer to buy the social media network for $44bn just days before a court battle over the deal was due to begin.

Twitter’s shares were suspended from trading last night after its price rocketed 18pc following reports that Mr Musk had offered to proceed with the takeover.

Mr Musk confirmed the proposal in a letter to Twitter, published in stock market filings last night, offering to pay the original offer price of $54.20 a share which was first tabled in April.

“We write to notify you that the Musk Parties intend to proceed to closing of the transaction contemplated by the April 25, 2022 Merger Agreement, on the terms and subject to the conditions set forth therein,” Mr Musk’s lawyers wrote.

A spokesman for Twitter acknowledged the letter from Mr Musk and said Twitter intended to complete the deal at $54.20 per share.

Twitter’s shares were valued at $47.93 as of their suspension yesterday, giving the social media network a market cap of almost $37bn (£32bn).

It comes after the billionaire tried to back out of the deal in July, claiming Twitter management’s figures for the number of fake or spam accounts on the site were misleadingly low.

Twitter bosses subsequently sued him in Delaware Chancery Court to force him to go forward with the purchase, with a trial due to begin on Oct 17.

Shares in Tesla slumped last night amid concerns that Mr Musk, chief executive of the carmaker, may have to sell some of his stock to fund the deal.

Tesla’s shares were trading at $242.30 on Tuesday night paring gains from earlier in the day when they hit $256.

Mr Musk, who is the world’s richest man with a net worth of more than $220bn, sold about $7bn of shares in Tesla in August, saying they could be used to help finance the potential Twitter deal if he lost his battle to get out of it. It means he may have to raise extra cash to add to the shares he has already sold and funding from outside investors.

News of the renewed offer appeared to have caught staff by surprise. Rumman Chowdhury, Twitter’s director of machine learning ethics, tweeted on Tuesday: “I am sitting on 2023 company wide strategy readouts and I guess we are going to collectively ignore what’s going on.”

The buyout raises fresh concerns that Mr Musk will seek to break what he sees as the Left-wing consensus dominating the social media site’s moderators. Text messages published by lawyers in the run-up to the court battle revealed that Mr Musk wanted to see “someone who has a savvy cultural/political view to be the VP [vice president] of actual enforcement”.

Mr Musk has also been linked to suggestions that former US president Donald Trump could return to the site, having been banned after using it to encourage a violent mob to storm the US Capitol building on Jan 6 2021.

Another text message from Mr Musk published by lawyers involved in the court case read: “It is better, in my opinion, to take Twitter private, restructure and return to the public markets once that is done. That was also Jack’s view when I talked to him,” referring to Twitter founder Jack Dorsey.

Mr Musk is expected to replace current chief executive Parag Agrawal once the $44bn takeover is complete.

Twitter staff reacted with outrage after Mr Musk first revealed plans to buy the company.

“I feel like I’m going to throw up”, one employee posted on an internal noticeboard in April, with another saying they were “honestly kinda terrified” by the billionaire’s plans.

Around 98pc of shareholders voted to accept the original deal in mid-september.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives said in a note to clients: “We see minimal regulatory risk in this deal although now Musk owning the Twitter platform will cause a firestorm of worries and questions looking ahead among users and the Beltway.”