Elon Musk suspends Twitter takeover

Published on: 05/13/2022 – 12:49 Multi-billionaire Elon Musk decided on Friday to suspend his acquisition of Twitter for which he made an offer of 44 billion dollars. He said he wanted to wait for the results of the analyzes on the proportion of fake accounts on the social network. The Elon Musk saga and Twitter have just experienced yet another twist. The whimsical boss of Tesla announced on Friday May 13 that he was postponing his acquisition of the famous social network. “The agreement is suspended pending details of the calculation which suggests that fake accounts and spam accounts represent only 5% of total users”, specified Elon Musk … on Twitter. A tweet which earned the action of the social network to collapse by more than 20% in electronic exchanges preceding the opening of Wall Street. The battle over fake accounts between Elon Musk and Twitter officials had already been going on for several weeks. The multi-billionaire, who offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion at the end of April, said that one of his priorities would be to clean up users in order to drive these fake users out of the social network. Why this backpedaling? Twitter’s management had told him in early May that there were only 5% of “bots” (fake accounts powered by robots) on the platform. An assertion that Elon Musk seems to take with some circumspection. But from there to suspending his long-awaited takeover? It should be added that the clouds seemed to accumulate its last days on the agreement. First, the rout of tech stocks on the stock market has prompted some commentators to wonder if Elon Musk might not end up finding that he paid too much for Twitter. “He might be tempted to want to renegotiate the terms of the agreement,” suggested the Guardian, Friday, May 9. In this respect, the suspension of the offer could be a way of restarting negotiations. circumstances under which it was made. He is said to have said too late that he amassed Twitter shares before making his offer and the SEC suspects that he masked his real intentions. Elon Musk might find that the game is no longer worth the candle.