Elon Musk confirms he will buy Twitter for original offer price
Claire Reid
Featured Image Credit: dpa picture alliance / SOPA Images Limited / Alamy Stock Photo
Elon Musk is set to buy Twitter for his original offer price of $54.20 a share.
The decision comes following months of back and forth between the world’s richest man and the social media platform, which was due to end up in court later this month.
A letter from Musk’s lawyer seen by Sky read: "Musk Parties intend to proceed to closing of the transaction... and adjourn the trial and all other proceedings."
Rumours about a U-turn on his decision to buy the social media platform started swirling earlier today, leading to Twitter shares being halted from trading.
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Prior to the pause on trading, Twitter shares had been been up by as much as 13 percent.
Musk first announced his intention to purchase Twitter back in April - offering a staggering $44 billion, which was 38 percent more than what it was valued at at the time.
At the time he vowed to make the platform ‘better than ever’.
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In a statement at the time, Musk said: "Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated.
"I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.
"Twitter has tremendous potential – I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."
However, he soon appeared to go cold on the idea and by July he attempted to backtrack on the deal, claiming that the site had more bots than he had originally been told.
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He said the number of bots exceeded the five percent Twitter had told him, meaning he was able to pull the deal.
His attempts to break the deal did not go down well with Twitter, who filed a lawsuit against Musk the same month.
In the suit, Twitter claimed: “Musk entered into a binding merger agreement with Twitter, promising to use his best efforts to get the deal done.
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“Now, less than three months later, Musk refuses to honour his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”
Both parties were set to appear in court on October 17, but Musk’s decision to buy Twitter means that is unlikely to go ahead.
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