New Delhi: Billionaire Elon Musk has terminated his $44 billion offer to buy Twitter, citing a “material breach” of agreement as the company “failed to provide enough information about the number of fake accounts”.
Elon Musk said the information is fundamental to Twitter’s business and financial performance and is needed to finish the merger, BBC reported.
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Musk’s lawyer Mike Ringler complained that his client had for nearly two months sought data to judge the prevalence of “fake or spam” accounts on the social media platform.
“Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement,” Elon Musk’s lawyers said in a letter to Twitter’s board.
Twitter says it plans to pursue legal action to enforce the agreement.
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“The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk,” Twitter chairman Bret Taylor wrote in a tweet, setting up a potentially long and protracted legal battle between the two sides.
The original merger agreement includes a $1bn (£830m) break-up fee.
In May, Musk said the deal was “temporarily on hold” as he was awaiting data on the number of fake and spam accounts on Twitter.
The billionaire businessman had asked for evidence to back the company’s assertion that spam and bot accounts make up less than 5% of its total users.