Elon Musk has offered to buy Twitter for the originally agreed price of $44 billion.
Tesla’s chief executive took to Twitter on Monday night to offer to move forward with the deal, two weeks before the two parties went to trial in Delaware Chancery Court.
Musk’s lawyers said in a letter that if the debt financing is received, the entrepreneur will be able to pay for the loan, provided the court stays the case and postpones the next trial, according to a regulatory filing on Tuesday. said it intended to close the transaction at the agreed price of $54.20 per share. and related procedures.
“The parties to Musk provide this notice without admitting liability and without waiving or prejudicing any rights,” the letter states.
In a statement, a Twitter spokesperson confirmed that it had received the letter and said, “The intention of the company is to complete the transaction at $54.20 per share.”
The parties held an emergency hearing with Judge Kathleen McCormick in court early Tuesday morning via Zoom, according to a person familiar with the situation.
Twitter is seeking broader protections from the court, including an order ensuring the timing and certainty of its closure, the person said. Both sides are currently hashing out what the mechanism will look like, the person said.
Another emergency court hearing, where both sides will renew judges, is scheduled for late Tuesday, according to two people familiar with the matter.
A person close to Twitter said the company was concerned that Musk would offer to go ahead with the deal to delay the trial. Musk was due to be fired later this week.
Shares of Twitter soared after Bloomberg first reported that Musk had offered to go ahead with the deal. After trading resumed, Twitter’s shares rose 22% to $52.
Tesla’s chief executive initially agreed to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share in April. Just months later, in July, he said he planned to withdraw the deal, citing concerns that the company had misled regulators and investors about the large number of fake accounts on its platform.
Twitter sued Musk to complete the deal. He argued that Musk’s withdrawal attempt was motivated by protecting his financial interests during a downturn in tech stocks, rather than legitimate concerns about account numbers.
The trial was scheduled to start on October 17th. The parties issued dozens of subpoenas to investors, bankers and others involved in the deal, each accusing the other of failing to cooperate in the pre-trial process.
Last month, Musk amended his complaint to include allegations that former Twitter executive Peiter Zatko misled users and regulators about the company’s security practices. Deny.
Musk’s attempt to avoid a protracted legal battle ended in the release of his private text messages with a prominent tech, but it’s another twist to a deal that has captivated the corporate world. increase.
Most observers believed it would be nearly impossible for Musk to back out of the full deal, but whether he could go through with it and what that meant for merger and acquisition deals more broadly. There was also curiosity about what it meant.
Historically, it has been very difficult for agreed buyers to relinquish a deal unless there is an extraordinary breach of the merger agreement.
The Wall Street banks that have signed up to provide $13 billion in loans are likely to face an uphill road to pay off debt, at least partially, through sales in the leveraged finance market. You may have to fund the transaction on a financial basis. themselves.
Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment.