Elon Musk’s Twitter deal in shambles

Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter is falling apart, three people familiar with the situation told the Washington Post on Thursday.  

According to the sources, Musk’s team had stopped engaging in discussions around the funding for the $44 billion buyout deal following the billionaire’s investigation into how many spam accounts are currently active on the social media network.  

On Thursday, Twitter revealed, however, that it is suspending over 1 million spam accounts every day – a doubling of its previous update.  

We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them on Twitter. We also lock millions of accounts each week that we suspect may be spam – if they can’t pass human verification challenges (captchas, phone verification, etc).

— Parag Agrawal (@paraga) May 16, 2022

In April, Musk offered to purchase Twitter for $43 billion after having acquired 9.2% of the company’s stock for $2.64 billion and becoming its largest shareholder. But in June, Musk’s lawyers accused Twitter of refusing to provide Musk with sufficient information about the exact number of spam users on the service – a key point in the deal.  

The social media company has also consistently stated that fewer than 5% of its daily active users are spam accounts, something Musk openly doubts.  

Now, Musk’s team concluded that it cannot verify Twitter’s figures on spam accounts and will potentially take drastic action, one of the people who spoke to the Washington Post said.  

In June, Twitter said that the company “has and will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr. Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement.” 

“We believe this agreement is in the best interest of all shareholders. We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms.” 

Since Musk announced his interest in buying Twitter, the company’s stock has gone through a whirlwind of emotion, at first gaining 31.5% between April 1 and 25 and then dipping by around 25% to $38 from the previous $51 highs.