Elon Musk formally tried to bail on his deal to buy Twitter, but legal experts say that he can’t just walk away.
Musk’s lawyers sent a letter to Twitter saying he is “terminating their merger agreement,” according to the filing.
But legal experts say Musk can’t just walk away from the deal. His April agreement to buy the company included a commitment to go through with the acquisition unless there’s a major change to the business, and legal experts say nothing has happened to meet that threshold. Musk has previously threatened to scuttle the deal if Twitter doesn’t give him more data to run his own analysis on how many spam bots it has, while Twitter has said it can’t give up personal info on its users like their names, emails and IP addresses, which it uses to come up with its own bot numbers.
Elon Musk has lost $62 billion so far in 2022. His wealth is mostly in Tesla stock and the car company stock jumped on Friday but has been struggling. Musk struggled to line up financing and investors to buy Twitter, and he has been sending out signals for months that he was going to try to bail on the deal.
Twitter is expected to sue Musk to force him to complete the acquisition. There is going to be a long and bitter legal fight ahead as Elon Musk made a bad deal and Twitter is going to try to force him to stick to it.
Mr. Easley is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association