Elon Musk Threatens to End Twitter Deal Without Information on Spam Accounts

The letter also provoked some eye-rolling. Mr. Musk, who leads the electric carmaker Tesla and the rocket company SpaceX, is famously mercurial and has often winged his wheeling and dealing, making his latest gambit not entirely unexpected.

“This is a move Twitter investors have for weeks been steeling themselves for, the moment when Elon Musk’s haphazard ruminations in tweets have been distilled into an official letter to regulators,” wrote Susannah Streeter, a senior investment and markets analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown. “The takeover was always destined to be a bumpy ride.”

Twitter said the sale to Mr. Musk remained on course. “We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms,” a spokesman said, adding that the company “will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr. Musk to consummate the transaction.”

Behind the scenes, Twitter has shared information with Mr. Musk for about a month without any breakdown in communication, a person with knowledge of the situation said, requesting anonymity because the discussions were confidential. One of Twitter’s concerns in sharing the information is Mr. Musk’s prior statements, both publicly and to Twitter, that he was considering starting a rival social media service, two people familiar with the matter said. Typically, such matters are addressed by adding guardrails, like limiting who would have access to such information, and are negotiated before striking any deal.

Sean Edgett, Twitter’s general counsel, also sent an email to employees on Monday morning reiterating the company’s commitment to closing the deal, according to a copy of the memo, which was obtained by The New York Times.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/06/technology/elon-musk-twitter.html