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Twitter’s shareholder meeting on Tuesday voted in favor of Elon Musk’s full acquisition of the company, despite the legal battle over his effort to abandon the offer.
Shareholders were expected to approve the sale, given the high figure Musk offered for the company. According to his initial offer, the Tesla owner proposed to buy the entirety of Twitter for a juicy $44 billion, valuing each share at $54.20.
Considering that social media’s shares today hover around $41, Musk’s offer was extremely attractive to shareholders.
Twitter shareholders have voted in favor of Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover deal, a value of $54.20 per share. The vote came days after Musk’s third letter to Twitter seeking to terminate their deal. https://t.co/A4hZf9tvEZ
— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) September 13, 2022
The board vote adds a new chapter to a dramatic saga between the social media company and the world’s richest man.
The give-and-take between Musk and Twitter
In early April, Musk bought enough Twitter shares to become one of its majority partners. A few days later, he made the attractive offer to acquire the entire company. However, things seem to have gone wrong during the negotiations.
Two months later, in July, Musk threatened Twitter with withdrawing its buyout offer, claiming that the company had refused to provide concrete and verifiable information about the number of fake, spam and bot accounts present on the platform.
According to Musk’s allegations, the social media company is lying when it claims that the number of spam accounts is consistently below 5% of total users.
Furthermore, Twitter sued Musk in an effort to force him to carry out the offer. Now the company will have to face the billionaire SpaceX owner in a trial that is set to begin in October.
To add fuel to the fire in Musk’s favor, Peter Zatko, a former Twitter internal security employee, filed a legal complaint against the company, accusing it of lying to the public, its users, its investors and even its board of directors regarding how they count fake accounts.
The shareholder vote would only serve as a pressure move, given that Twitter will have to prove in court that its reports on the actual number of bots are reliable and that Musk and Zatko’s accusations are not true.
Zatko, meanwhile, testified Tuesday before Congress and again accused Twitter officials of lying to federal regulators and congressmen.
Tomás Lugo, journalist and writer. Born in Venezuela and graduated in Social Communication. Has written for international media outlets. Currently living in Colombia // Tomás Lugo, periodista y articulista. Nacido en Venezuela y graduado en Comunicación Social. Ha escrito para medios internacionales. Actualmente reside en Colombia.