Why did Elon Musk agree to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, once more?

Musk’s submitting to the U.S. Securities and Alternate Fee that he’s, once more, prepared to purchase Twitter comes after a string of setbacks for the Tesla CEO within the Delaware Court docket of Chancery.

If Twitter’s lawsuit in Delaware succeeded, Musk would have been pressured to finish his $44 billion supply to purchase the social media firm. The Tesla CEO publicly backed out of the deal in July, following weeks of statements that he may stroll away attributable to considerations about spam accounts. 

“Writing was on the wall [Musk] couldn’t win in Delaware,” Dan Ives, Senior Fairness Analysis Analyst at Wedbush Securities, said on Twitter, with the supply doubtlessly saving “each side a protracted and ugly court docket battle forward.”

Musk was scheduled to be deposed on Oct. 6 and seven, with the trial beginning simply over per week afterward Oct. 17.

On Tuesday, Twitter mentioned that it intends to complete the transaction at $54.20 a share. Twitter’s lawsuit towards Musk will proceed till the 2 sides attain a deal, regardless of Musk’s supply. “The lawsuit gained’t cease lifeless in its tracks,” Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Regulation Faculty, instructed The Verge.

Twitter didn’t instantly reply to Fortune’s request for remark. 

Spam bots

When Musk deserted his supply to purchase Twitter earlier this yr, the Tesla CEO accused the social media firm of hiding the true variety of bots on the platform.

He claimed that impartial evaluation confirmed the proportion of spam accounts being far larger than the 5% claimed in Twitter’s filings to the SEC. 

Twitter, for its half, argued it had given Musk the info the corporate makes use of to estimate the variety of bots. The social media firm even granted Musk entry to the “firehose”: all tweets posted on the platform.

A pretrial listening to on Sep. 27 revealed that Musk had employed 5 corporations to parse by the corporate’s knowledge, just for the Tesla CEO to not use any of their findings in his arguments. Twitter mentioned it might uncover the findings of two corporations in submitted proof: one argued that Twitter’s estimate of 5% was right, whereas the opposite might solely guess with low confidence that 11% of Twitter accounts had been bots. 

Even that larger quantity is much beneath Musk’s claims, comparable to when the Tesla CEO mentioned in Might that his “lowest estimate” for spam accounts on Twitter was 20%, and that the true quantity was in all probability far larger. 

Destroying proof

The bumper Sept. 27 pre-trial listening to led to a censure movement towards Musk after Twitter legal professionals revealed that he’d not solely used Sign, an encrypted messaging app, to speak with key gamers, but in addition set his messages to auto-delete.

Musk had initially claimed that he has not used Sign to debate the Twitter take care of folks like Jared Birchall, the financier who runs Musk’s household workplace. 

Twitter legal professionals argued that auto-deleted messages was the identical as destroying proof, and requested the Delaware court docket to put a “extreme sanction” on Musk. 

In a earlier case the place a celebration was discovered to have deleted digital info, the Delaware Court docket of Chancery ordered it to pay the opposing facet’s authorized charges. 

Discovery

Musk’s U-turn comes after a number of of his textual content messages had been made public final week. The communications had been uncovered in discovery earlier to the Twitter trial. 

The texts embrace communications with different outstanding tech founders, together with Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, Salesforce founder Marc Benioff, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. The messages cowl a interval spanning from earlier than Musk’s disclosure that he was Twitter’s largest shareholder, to when Twitter accepted Musk’s buyout supply.

The texts revealed the personal communications of a few of the wealthiest folks on the planet, in addition to doubtlessly embarassing conversations, like one between Musk and his ex-wife, actress Talulah Riley, complaining about “woke-ism”, or congratulatory messages from people like podcaster Joe Rogan. 

Additional communications, uncovered in discovery, could have been revealed if the listening to continued. On Monday, Decide Kathaleen McCormick allowed Twitter to assessment much more texts from Musk’s inside circle.

And Musk was set to be deposed later this week, forcing the Tesla CEO to reply extra questions beneath oath.

Worries in regards to the upcoming deposition, attributable to begin on Thursday, could also be why Musk revived his supply on Tuesday. “What’s in the end unusual about [the offer] is that it’s probably the most predictable ending,” Ann Lipton, a professor of entrepreneurship at Tulane College, instructed The Verge. “In fact circumstances settle earlier than the deposition of the highest man.” 

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