Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter deal has been a bumpy one-off

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Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter deal has been a bumpy one-off

The $44 billion Twitter-Elon Musk deal has had many twists and turns over the past six months, with the world s richest man finally agreeing to close the deal at his original offer price of $54.20 a share, days ahead of an impending trial later in October.

April 4: A regulatory filing showed that Tesla boss Elon Musk had a 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter worth $3 billion, making one of the most prolific users of the micro-blogging site.

April 14: Musk offers to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share or a total of $44 billion, saying the company needs to be taken private to address free speech issues surrounding it. According to a letter to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor, my offer is my best and final offer, and if it is not accepted, I would have to reconsider my position as a shareholder, he said.

April 21: Elon Musk lines up a $46.5 billion package to fund his bid to buy Twitter. According to securities filings, it is a combination of debt and equity financing.

April 25 : After trying to fend off the offer through a poison pill strategy, Twitter accepts the world's richest person's offer to buy and take it public. The $44 billion buyout would have been one of the biggest acquisitions of a tech company. Musk said in a statement announcing the deal that Twitter is the centre of a functioning democracy, free speech is the cornerstone of a functioning democracy.

May 13: Musk posted a surprise tweet saying the deal was temporarily on hold pending details supporting the calculation that spam fake accounts actually represent less than 5 per cent of users.

May 16 : In a series of tweets, platform CEO Parag Agrawal explained how the company could tackle spam accounts and bots. Musk fights the CEO public with a poop emoji.

May 17: Keeping the guessing game on, Musk tweeted that this deal can't move forward until he gets more clarity from the platform about the extent of its problem with spam and fake accounts. Twitter has said it is committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as soon as practicable. July 8 : Musk's lawyers inform the SEC that the billionaire was terminating the deal because the platform didn't respond to his concerns about spam and fake accounts.

July 12: Twitter sued Elon Musk, setting up a fight in a Delaware court to force him back into the deal. Having put a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Mr Musk apparently believes that he is free to change his mind, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value and walk away, according to the lawsuit.

July 19 : A Delaware judge agrees to Twitter's request to speed-track the trial, scheduling it for five days in October.

The regulatory filings show that Elon Musk sold $7 billion of Tesla stock. He later tweeted that the move was to raise funds in case he is forced to complete his $44 billion Twitter deal.

October 4th: Twitter confirms that Musk has agreed to buy Twitter for his original offer of $54.20 a share, days ahead of the trial in a Delaware court.