Elon Musk offered Twitter to buy the social network at the price agreed in April, according to press reports, two weeks before the trial between the two parties for the eventful acquisition.
The listing of Twitter’s shares was suspended on Tuesday on the New York Stock Exchange “pending information” after a Bloomberg article revealing this new takeover offer from the Tesla boss.
The listing had been suspended for the first time for 5 minutes and the stock had jumped to + 18%, before stopping again, at + 12.7%.
According to the economic news agency, Elon Musk sent a letter to Twitter on Monday, offering to acquire the platform for $ 54.20 per share, the price he had initially offered the company in the spring and which the board had finally accepted. .
According to CNBC, the deal could be finalized as early as Friday or Monday.
The two sides had signed a contract in late April, but in July Elon Musk unilaterally renounced the agreement.
The bluebird group had then taken legal action to force him to honor his commitment, and all indicated that he was well positioned to win.
“It is a clear sign that Musk recognizes that his chances of winning against the council in a Delaware court are very slim and that the $ 44 billion acquisition should have happened one way or another,” he reacted. ‘analyst Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities.
Elon Musk had bombarded Twitter with criticism before and after the signing of the acquisition agreement, accusing the platform of censoring users and not cracking down enough on spam and fake accounts.
He justified his step back by saying that the percentage of automated accounts on the platform was well above the 5% figure proposed by the San Francisco company.
Faced with the Twitter complaint, the president of the Delaware specialized court granted the company a swift trial, while Elon Musk wanted to wait until next year and demanded astronomical amounts of data.
The trial, if maintained, should theoretically take place from 17 to 21 October.
The Musk clan seemed to have earned a point when Peiter Zatko, the former Twitter security chief who was fired in January, accused the group of serious security breaches in late August, in a report filed with US authorities.
But during the preliminary hearings with the judge, his lawyers seemed to struggle to justify the allegations of the false accounts.
A Twitter attorney pointed to two reports from data analytics firms hired by the businessman, Cyabra and CounterAction, which put the rate at 11% and 5.3%, respectively.
“None of these reports even remotely support what Mr. Musk told Twitter and the world in his July 8 letter,” attorney Brad Wilson said in a hearing.
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