Twitter's CEO is Reportedly Willing to go to War to Force Elon Musk to Buy his Company - Bots & All!
Musk's team ended diligence after Twitter admitted the supplied firehose didn't contain the data needed to confirm/refute the company's claimed SPAM/BOT percentages [UPDATED]
By Alexander Muse ·
UPDATE: Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s CEO, is reported to have stated that he’s “willing to go to war to make this deal happen.”1 You know you've got the wrong CEO when he is willing to go to war to force someone else to run his company. Maybe what Elon has revealed is that Twitter's real problem stems from a lack of leadership.
Bookmakers in London calculate that there is a less than 5% chance that Elon Musk will close on his proposed Twitter acquisition under the current terms (and less than a 10% chance under any terms). Online sports books give the deal a little better chance but still predict it closing at less than 40%.
My prediction:
No. 1 The deal won't close.
No. 2 Elon will cite $TWTR's failure/refusal to share the data necessary to corroborate the company's 5% bot/spam claim as his reason for walking.
No. 3 Elon will demand $TWTR pay him the $1 billion breakup fee for their failure/refusal. He may even take his case to a DE Chancery Court.
No. 4 $TWTR will countersue Musk asking the court for specific performance and in lieu of that to force Musk to pay them the $1 billion breakup fee.
No. 5 Eventually both parties will agree to a settlement that neither of them is happy with.
Alternatively, and this would be ballsy, Elon could ask the DE Chancery Court to force Twitter to turn over the data necessary to corroborate their 5% spam/bot claims. The company has admitted publicly they did not give him the data he would need to confirm their claims. He could argue that if Twitter does not want to share the data he should be released from the deal and Twitter should have to pay the $1 billion breakup fee.
Twitter admitted that the data it provided to Musk's team would NOT allow for the calculation of spam/bot accounts - Twitter management explained they were not willing to give Musk's team the necessary data as it would require them to share private information with the billionaire's team. Elon made it crystal clear the deal would NOT proceed until/unless his team was able to confirm Twitter's claim that fewer than 5% of accounts were fake. Presumably, Twitter has known for some time the deal has been dead - they knew that if they wanted the deal to close they'd have to give Musk's team the data, and yet they decided not to hand it over. Either they are very concerned about the privacy of their users or they know that Elon would expose the fact that far more than 5% of accounts are spam/bots.
To that end, it makes sense that the company has been conducting layoffs of up to 30% of some departments. Twitter is trading at $38.79 as of 7:48 PM.
On May 13th I suggested Elon was paying way too much for Twitter:
By May 17th I was certain Elon wasn't going to close on the Twitter deal:
By June 6th I was ABSOLUTELY certain Elon wasn't going to close on the Twitter deal:
Then all of the armchair lawyers on WSB (and many in the media) were claiming Twitter could force Elon to buy Twitter. On June 20th I tried to explain why they were wrong and that Twitter could NOT force Elon to close:
Here is the latest from WaPo: Sources: Elon Musk's deal to buy Twitter is in serious jeopardy as his team concluded that spam account figures aren't verifiable using Twitter's data firehose — Talks with investors have cooled in recent weeks and Musk's camp believes it can't confirm Twitter's claims about spam accounts.
The truth of the matter is that at this point even if Elon Musk had to pay the $1B breakup fee to walk away he'd be coming out WAY ahead. This deal made some sense to start with but today it makes ZERO sense.
