Elon Musk pulls out of Twitter purchase

Elon Musk, the chief executive officer of Tesla and the world's richest person, said he was terminating his $44 billion deal to buy Twitter because the social media platform had breached multiple provisions of the merger agreement. 

Twitter's chairman, Bret Taylor, said on the micro-blogging platform that the board planned to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. 

"The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk...," he wrote.

In a filing, Musk's lawyers said Twitter had failed or refused to respond to multiple requests for information on fake or spam accounts on the platform, which is fundamental to the company's business performance. 

“Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr. Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr. Musk incomplete or unusable information,” the filing reads.  

“Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement,” it also said. 

Musk also said he was walking away because Twitter fired high-ranking executives and one-third of the talent acquisition team, breaching Twitter's obligation to "preserve substantially intact the material components of its current business organization". 

Musk's decision is likely to result in a protracted legal tussle between the billionaire and the 16-year-old San Francisco-based company.

Twitter, however, is hoping that court proceedings will start in a few weeks and be resolved in a few months. 

The board unanimously agreed to sell the platform to Musk for $44bn in April, in a deal that stirred controversy and questions about free speech and misinformation on the popular social media platform.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES