According to two people with knowledge of the situation, billionaire Elon Musk is recommending moving forward with his first $44 billion bid to take Twitter Inc. private, bringing an end to the contentious legal dispute that was ready to go to trial.
An agreement would conclude months of tumultuous litigation that hurt Twitter’s reputation and fueled Musk’s reputation for unpredictable behavior while putting the world’s richest person in command of one of the most powerful media platforms.
According to an earlier story from Bloomberg, Musk proposed the idea in a letter to Twitter. People who wished to remain anonymous were quoted talking about private information.
Reuters’ inquiries for comment on Twitter and Musk’s attorneys were not immediately answered. It was not immediately clear why Musk decided to give up the battle with Twitter.
The announcement comes only days before a highly anticipated legal battle between Musk and Twitter in Delaware’s Court of Chancery on October 17. Twitter was planning to ask the court to require Musk to finalize the transaction at $54.20 per share, or $44 billion for the entire business.
Musk agreed to purchase Twitter for $44 billion in April, but within weeks claimed there were much more bot accounts than Twitter had estimated, which was fewer than 5% of all users. The usage of bots, which are artificial accounts, can cause an overestimation of the number of actual users using the service, which is crucial for determining advertising prices and the site’s overall worth.
Musk, one of Twitter’s most well-known users, asserted in July that Twitter had deceived him about the number of actual users and the security of user data and that he was free to walk away from the agreement.
On September 27, Twitter’s legal team stated that records received from two data scientists working for Musk revealed their estimates of the percentage of false accounts on the site to be between 5.3% and 11%.
