Renson Mwakandana
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has threatened to back out of his Twitter bid, claiming that the firm violated the merger agreement by withholding vital data on spam and bogus accounts. Musk said he was entitled to his own measurement of fake accounts in a letter to Twitter’s head of legal policy and trust, Vijaya Gadde, on Monday.
“This is a clear material breach of Twitter’s obligations under the merger agreement and Mr. Musk reserves all rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” said the letterbrought by Musk’s attorneys.
The world’s wealthiest man demanded that Twitter produce evidence to back up its claims that false accounts and algorithms make up fewer than 5% of the platform’s active user base.
Musk began tweeting about bots (an autonomous program on the internet or another network that can interact with systems or users) a few weeks ago, with the intention of doing his own private analysis to determine the true numbers. The assertions drew varied reactions, with some Twitter stakeholders accusing him of leveraging the allegations to pressure the firm into accepting a cheaper deal.
Lawyer Mike Ringler in the letter said, “As Twitter’s prospective owner, Mr. Musk is clearly entitled to the requested data to enable him to prepare for transitioning Twitter’s business to his ownership and to facilitate his transaction financing. To do both, he must have a complete and accurate understanding of the very core of Twitter’s business model – its active user base.”
According to the letter, Elon Musk feels Twitter is intentionally fighting and undermining his information rights, based on the company’s recent correspondence.
In a statement, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, who has defended the company’s spam statistic, responded to Musk saying, “Twitter has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr. Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement.” The company added that they plan to close the acquisition and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and parameters.
According to Musk, the actual number of spam accounts is substantially greater, maybe as high as 90%. The acquisition “cannot occur” until the business presents “evidence” of its spam metric, Musk previously stated.
