Elon Musk's Twitter deal 'not on hold, moving forward', executives claim: Report

Twitter's top lawyer, Vijaya Gadde, told employees at an all-hands meeting on May 19 that billionaire Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase offer was moving forward and that there was "no such thing" as a deal being "on hold", Bloomberg reported. The report came a week after the Tesla CEO announced the deal was stopped until the social media platform could show proof that fewer than 5% of Twitter accounts were fraudulent.

According to the Bloomberg report, which cited sources familiar with the discussion, Twitter management informed staff that the sale will go through as planned and that the business will not renegotiate Musk's agreed-upon price of $54.20 per share. According to Bloomberg, Musk and his colleagues interact with Twitter on a regular basis. The news comes just days after Musk claimed he couldn't "go further" with the offer because Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal "publicly refused to present proof" that less than 5% of Twitter accounts are bogus or spam.

Following Musk's suggestion that he would try to renegotiate the deal at a lesser price, Twitter shares dipped again earlier this week. According to Bloomberg, Ned Segal, Twitter's CFO, explained to staff that the disparity between Twitter's stock price —which is presently trading at $37.60 per share — and Musk's offer represented uncertainty about the deal's completion. Meanwhile, Gadde told employees that Musk must "do everything he can" to acquire finance for the acquisition and that the business might seek to enforce the terms "in court", though she claimed that would be "very unlikely."

Musk's $44 billion Twitter deal

Musk's $44 billion acquisition offer was accepted by Twitter's board last month, as Musk seeks to secure his finance. However, the Tesla CEO stated on May 13 that the deal was halted pending more information on the company's calculation that fake or spam accounts account for less than 5% of its users. He stated he was "still committed to the transaction" two hours later. He continued to challenge the company's spam stats days later.

Musk has stated that bogus accounts could account for at least 20% of all accounts on the network. He said Agrawal declined to offer information on the computation, possibly referring to a Twitter exchange in which the Twitter CEO indicated outside sources couldn't predict the figures.

On May 17, Twitter stated that it was committed to seeing the deal with Musk through to completion at the previously agreed-upon price and parameters. According to Agrawal, Twitter suspends many spam accounts every day, with many of the suspensions occurring before users ever see the accounts.

(With agency inputs, Image: AP)