Musk says he wants Twitter again and will pay $44B price
Elon Musk wants Twitter again — and Twitter is game. The billionaire Tesla CEO has proposed to buy the company at the originally agreed-on price of $44 billion, bringing the tumultuous, monthslong saga another step closer to a conclusion.
Musk made the surprising turnaround not on Twitter, as has been his custom, but in a letter to Twitter that the company disclosed in a filing Tuesday with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
It came less than two weeks before a trial between the two parties over Musk’s attempt to back out of the deal is scheduled to start in Delaware. Musk also faced a scheduled deposition by Twitter attorneys starting Thursday.
In response, Twitter said it intends to close the transaction at $54.20 per share after receiving the letter from Musk. But the company stopped short of saying it's dropping its lawsuit against the billionaire Tesla CEO. Experts said that makes sense given the contentious relationship and lack of trust between the two parties.
“I don’t think Twitter will give up its trial date on just Musk’s word — it’s going to need more certainty about closing," said Andrew Jennings, professor at Brooklyn Law School, noting that the company may also be worried about Musk's proposal being a delay tactic. After all, he's already tried to unsuccessfully postpone the trial twice.
Trading in Twitter's stock, which had been halted for much of the day pending release of the news, resumed trading late Tuesday and soared 22% to close at $52.
But even if the deal now goes through without a hitch, it’s too soon to call a victory for Twitter, said Jasmine Enberg, an analyst with Insider Intelligence.
“The deal will solve some of the short-term uncertainty at the company, but Twitter is essentially in the same place it was in April,” she said....
