Twitter and Elon Musk will go to court in October on whether billionaires have to finish $44 billion acquisition of the social media company, a Delaware judge ruled on Tuesday.
The ruling is the first in a lawsuit Twitter filed this month to force Musk, the world’s richest man, to make the blockbuster deal. Mr. Musk agreed to buy Twitter in April, but indicated this month he wants to stop buy, lean on, cling to. Twitter sought to expedite the case by requesting a trial in September, which Musk countered by requesting a trial in February.
During a hearing that lasted nearly two hours on Tuesday, Kathaleen St. J. McCormick, the judge overseeing the case at Delaware Premier Court, ruled that a trial would take place in October.
“The longer the merger transaction remains in limbo, the greater the cloud of uncertainty that surrounds the company,” she said.
The ruling was a victory for Twitter, which said the extended deadline would give Musk more time to manage the company and find a way out of the deal. Ms. McCormick ruled that the trial would last five days, with the exact date to be determined based on the court’s schedule and the attorneys in the case.
“We are pleased that the court has agreed to proceed with this trial,” a Twitter spokesperson said. A spokesman for Mr Musk’s legal team did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
When Mr. Musk agreed to buy Twitter, he said he would keep it private and that the company had a lot of potential. But within weeks, he began to argue that Twitter thwarted his efforts to understand how many accounts on its platform were fake and said the company did not disclose relevant information to the public. he.
Twitter said Mr Musk was looking to exit the sale as the stock market plunged. The company said it worked with Mr. Musk to provide him with information about the fake accounts.
During Tuesday’s hearing, Twitter pushed for the lawsuit to be resolved as quickly as possible. Bill Savitt, an attorney for Twitter, said “continued uncertainty” over the deal “harms Twitter, hours every day” and asked for a trial to be scheduled for September. Mr. Savitt said that the postponement would allow Musk to deplete the funds for the deal.
Musk’s lawyers said the billionaire needs more time to analyze the unusual amount of data to determine whether Twitter has accurately counted the number of unauthenticated accounts on its platform.
Mr. Musk’s attorney, Andy Rossman, said Twitter is trying to “hide” its bot metrics, “for as long as it takes for the deal to go through”.
