Musk hints at renegotiation over Twitter takeover

ELON MUSK has raised the prospect of a renegotiation in his takeover of Twitter, saying a deal at a lower price would not be “out of the question”.

Shares in the social media company fell 8pc yesterday. The stock has been dropping amid fears that Mr Musk could walk away from the $44bn (£36bn) acquisition. That concern has grown over the past week after Mr Musk, the world’s richest man, questioned the number of spam and fake accounts on Twitter.

Mr Musk said yesterday that fake users were estimated to make up at least 20pc of all Twitter accounts. The outspoken billionaire even asked rhetorically if the number could be as high as 90pc, according to a video of his appearance at a Miami tech conference.

Twitter declined to comment, although Parag Agrawal, its chief executive, earlier posted a thread on the site saying “we suspend over half a million spam accounts every day”. Twitter says about 5pc of accounts are fake.

Mr Musk, the chief executive of Tesla and Spacex, last week said that his bid to buy Twitter was “temporarily on hold” pending details about how many spam and fake accounts are on the platform. Over the weekend, he tweeted that Twitter’s legal team called to complain that he had violated their nondisclosure agreement. Twitter has declined to comment.

Mr Musk spoke at a conference hosted by a podcast called All-in run by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks and David Friedberg. The $7,500-per-person event was sold out and organisers said journalists were excluded from attending.

Mr Musk appeared at the Miami summit via video conference.

He began buying Twitter shares in January and disclosed a 9.2pc stake in the company on April 4.

Twitter’s board accepted Mr Musk’s $44bn bid to buy the company and take it private on April 25, but the deal has yet to close and Twitter’s shares are trading far below Musk’s offer.

Some market analysts believe that Mr Musk is angling to pay a lower price for Twitter by raising the issue of fake accounts on the network.

The spread between Mr Musk’s $54.20-a-share offer price and Twitter’s share price continues to widen, wiping out all the gains the stock had made since he disclosed his stake.