Business

Twitter calls Elon Musk’s case against $44bn deal ‘implausible’

Social media company and Tesla chief executive exchange salvos in bitter fight over takeover

Asked what would happen to Tesla were he to leave, Elon Musk said: 'I think Tesla would continue to do very well even if I was kidnapped by aliens.' Photograph: Patrick Pleul/Pool/AP

Dave Lee
Fri Aug 5 2022 - 08:29

Twitter has accused Elon Musk of creating a “new set of excuses” to avoid honouring his $44 billion (€43 billion) agreement to buy the social media company, calling his recently filed objections “implausible and contrary to fact”.

After Twitter sued Mr Musk last month to force the deal through, Mr Musk filed a countersuit last week trying to block the social media company’s effort, which is still under seal. A judge has ordered it to be released on Friday.

Twitter made public its rebuttals to the Tesla chief executive’s legal case on Thursday in a court filing shared by Bret Taylor, chairman of the social media group’s board.

In his countersuit, Mr Musk again said Twitter had breached the agreement by greatly underestimating the proportion of spam and bots on its platform. The billionaire’s own analysis estimated the number of bot or spam accounts to be at least 10 per cent of all users. Twitter has previously estimated bots made up less than 5 per cent of accounts.

READ MORE

Mr Musk also said Twitter had overstated how many of its users were monetisable, alleging the number of users who actually saw advertising on the service was “about 65 million lower” than the company represented in regulatory filings. Mr Musk has said only about 16 million users were seeing the “majority” of advertising.

Twitter responded by calling Mr Musk’s estimates “factually inaccurate, legally insufficient and commercially irrelevant”.

It said the methodology behind Mr Musk’s estimations was “untenable on its face” and was “not measuring the same thing as Twitter or even using the same data as Twitter”.

The company questioned the veracity of Mr Musk’s data, claiming a tool purportedly used to analyse the data had labelled the billionaire’s own account as a “likely bot”.

Twitter concluded: “Mr Musk’s counterclaims, based as they are on distortion, misrepresentation and outright deception, change nothing.”

In addition to the filings, both parties are casting a wide net in seeking additional information regarding the formulation of the deal.

Mr Musk has subpoenaed Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase for details on how they advised Twitter, requesting any documents detailing financial performance, discussions with the company about the deal and any analysis of its valuation.

Twitter, meanwhile, has served information requests to the banks handling Mr Musk’s financing of the deal, as well as co-investors and others in the billionaire’s orbit.

As the dispute with Twitter escalates, and heads for a fast-tracked October 17th court date, Mr Musk is also contending with questions from Tesla fans and shareholders regarding his role as chief executive of the electric carmaker.

On Thursday, at Tesla’s annual meeting, Mr Musk addressed several questions related to the Twitter dispute and said he had “a good sense of where to point the engineering team at Twitter to make it radically better”.

Asked what would happen to Tesla were he to leave or split his time, Mr Musk said: “I think Tesla would continue to do very well even if I was kidnapped by aliens or went back to my home planet.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2022

LATEST STORIES