written by Mike Isaac and Kate Conger
Twitter was a runner-up social media company for many years. It was never as big and successful as Facebook or Instagram. It merely struggled on.
Elon Musk, a fervent user of the service, then barged in. He said he could run Twitter much better if he were in charge and made an offer to buy it for $44 billion. He mocked Twitter’s executives, criticised the company’s content guidelines, voiced complaints about the service, and misled the company’s more than 7,000 employees with his statements. Twitter’s stock fell more than 30% as Musk revealed the company’s poor business and financial prospects.
Now that billionaire Musk is trying to back out of the huge deal, Twitter will unavoidably be in worse shape than it was when Musk first said he would buy it. Musk has damaged employee morale, spooked potential advertisers, emphasised Twitter’s financial difficulties, and spread false information about how the social media platform functions with each scathing tweet and public taunt.
Founder of Twitter and current member of its board of directors Jason Goldman said, “His engagement with Twitter took a severe toll on the company.” “Employees, advertisers, and the general market cannot have faith in a company whose path is unknown and which will now go to court to complete a transaction with a bad-faith actor,” the statement reads.
The precarious circumstance highlights the reason Twitter plans to sue Musk this week to force the completion of the deal. The court case is probably going to be huge and drawn out, requiring months of expensive litigation and competitive negotiations by top attorneys. Resolution is not guaranteed; even if Twitter prevails, Musk may choose to walk away by making a payment.
The harm caused by Musk, 51, was obvious on Monday. Investors were concerned about the impending legal dispute, which caused Twitter’s stock to drop more than 11% to one of its lowest levels since 2020. Since Musk’s acquisition proposal was accepted by Twitter on April 25, its stock has lost over one-third of its value as investors have grown less confident that the deal will be completed as agreed. (In contrast, the heavily weighted Nasdaq index for technology fell by about 12.5% during that time.)
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Monday, Twitter opted not to comment. The company’s attorneys claimed in a letter to Musk’s attorneys on Sunday that Musk’s decision to end the agreement was “invalid and wrongful” and that he had “knowingly, intentionally, willfully, and materially breached” the terms of the purchase agreement. Facebook would
