Twitter board endorses Musk deal
Elon Musk moved one step closer to officially buying Twitter with an endorsement Tuesday from the social media platform’s board of directors.
The board recommended in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that shareholders sign off on the $44 billion deal. The regulatory filing states that the board “unanimously recommends” that shareholders vote for “the adoption of the merger agreement.”
The endorsement is the latest development in a back-and-forth saga that began with Musk, 50, announcing in April that he’d reached a deal to acquire Twitter at $54.20 per share.
Musk recently threatened to bail on the purchase, claiming Twitter has failed to provide him with data for how many spam and fake accounts inhabit the website.
Twitter claims it has provided Musk with information “in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement.”
Musk contends that more than 20% of the accounts on Twitter are fake, while the platform’s CEO, Parag Agrawal, has said the number is believed to be under 5%.
Twitter’s current value is below the $54.20 per share that Musk offered in April, further complicating the deal’s completion. Shareholders would now make $15.22 on each share they own if the deal were to be completed as currently constructed.
Shareholders sued Musk last month, accusing him of deflating Twitter’s stock price.
Musk is the richest person in the world, according to Forbes, which lists his net worth at more than $226 billion. He’s the founder of the aerospace company SpaceX and CEO of the automotive company Tesla.
Last week, Musk spoke during a virtual meeting with Twitter employees despite the deal still being in the works.
Twitter executive Nola Weinstein quoted Musk in a tweet as telling the staffers, “Trust is as trust does. I tend to be extremely literal in what I say . ... One does not [need] to read between the lines. One can simply read the lines.”
At the Qatar Economic Forum on Tuesday, Musk described the shareholders’ vote as one of the “unresolved matters” in his Twitter deal, according to the financial outlet Bloomberg. “There is the question of, will the debt portion of the round come together and then will the shareholders vote in favor,” Musk said.