Twitter shares halted as Musk ready to buy for original price
Twitter shares have been suspended as Elon Musk is set to go ahead with his offer of $54.20 a share.
The social media platform confirmed reports to City PM that the serial entrepreneur intended to buy Twitter for his original $44bn offer.
“We received the letter from the Musk parties which they have filed with the SEC,” Twitter said in a statement. “The intention of the Company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share.”
Twitter shares opened at $42.81 this morning, meaning that Musk is now also coughing up a hefty premium for the US company.
Shares surged nearly 13 per cent to $48 following Bloomberg’s initial leak, causing trade to be paused.
The Tesla founder was due to appear in court later this month over his attempts to pull out of the takeover deal agreed in April, which he later u-turned on in July.
Musk has previously argued that Twitter’s public disclosures about bot and fake account numbers were misleading, while Twitter argued that the fixed-price deal agreed had simply become “less attractive” to him as the stock market cooled.
Last month Twitter shareholders voted to approve the $44bn buy-out offer, which remained up in the air because of the lawsuit with Musk.
“It’s the latest twist in the dramatic takeover saga, and comes just two days before he was set to be deposed by Twitter’s lawyers, raising speculation that ‘Team Musk’ believe the chances of the court ruling in his favour were slim,” said senior investment and markets analyst Susannah Streeter.
Head of TMT Research at Mirabaud Neil Campling said the news felt like a “classic Musk distraction tactic,” following a disappointing set of third quarter results from Tesla on Sunday.
Musk took to Twitter late yesterday to tell his nearly 108 million followers that he was buying the social media firm to accelerate his creation of the “everything app”.