Elon Musk is trying to withdraw his £36 billion bid to buy Twitter.
The billionaire Tesla CEO backed out to the deal after he claimed that the social media giant did not offer up enough info on the number of spam accounts currently operational on the microblogging site.
In response to 50-year-old tech mogul rescinding his offer - which comes with a $1 billion break clause - Twitter have outlined their intention to pursue legal action against him.
Bret Taylor, Twitter’s chairman tweeted: "The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk.”
Elon’s back out from the deal - which was first announced in April - comes after he declared the it “temporarily on hold” as he wanted to hear more about bots on the site after asking for evidence to support Twitter’s claim only 5 per cent of its users were fake, a much smaller amount than Elon’s claim of 20 per cent. .
In a letter to the US Securities and Exchange Commision, legal representatives for the SpaceX entrepreneur said that the company - which is helmed by CEO Parag Agrawal - failed to comply with his request.
The letter read: "Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk's requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information."
Following the termination of the deal, Twitter’s share price sank seven per cent.
Many tech experts shared their opinion that Elon’s attempt to buy Twitter was a “clever ruse” to distract from his attempt to “sell and liquidate” Tesla stock.
John Wolfe, the co-founder of Lux Capital tweeted that the “entire thing was clever ruse to SELL + LIQUIDATE $8.5 BILLION of TESLA STOCK (w/plausible excuse for doing it) 80 per cent odds Elon pays $1B breakup fee + walks away with $7.5B liquidated. 20% spends $100M fighting litigation. honestly think he can “land rockets” but can’t fix ‘bots’?”
