Elon Musk has offered to close his original deal to buy Twitter for a whopping $44 billion — a bid to avoid a court trial over the hotly contested agreement slated for later this month, sources told The Post.
The billionaire Tesla CEO is in talks for a settlement to acquire the social network for $54.20 per share — the same price he agreed to in April before saying in July he was pulling out of the deal, according to sources close to the talks.
Twitter shares spiked more than 13% to $48.13 immediately following an earlier report of Musk’s proposal by Bloomberg and were halted for pending news. Musk sent a letter to Twitter with the offer, according to Bloomberg.
Musk notified Twitter’s lawyers of the offer to go through with the deal under its original terms late Monday night, according to a source familiar with the matter. The two sides worked toward hashing out an agreement in a Delaware Court of Chancery hearing this morning that was closed to the public, the source said.
Another hearing will likely be held this afternoon but it’s unclear whether the judge hearing the case, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, will make it open to the public.
Months of bad blood between Twitter and Musk have made Twitter insistent that the Delaware court supervise the closing process in the coming days.
If everything goes as expected and Musk doesn’t try to pull any last-minute “gotchas” on Twitter, the deal should realistically close within days or at most a week, a source familiar with the matter said.
Twitter sued Musk over his refusal to go through with the deal in a trial that was set to open on Oct. 17. Musk was scheduled to be deposed by Twitter’s attorneys on Thursday and Friday this week, raising the prospect that the last-minute deal was made in part to avoid the deposition.
Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal was deposed on Monday, according to a source close to the situation.
An attorney for Musk and Twitter both declined to comment.
Less than an hour after the news broke on Tuesday, Musk posted a tweet about SpaceX’s Starlink internet service but made no mention of the Twitter news.
Analysts who cover Twitter say that $54.20 is an astronomically high price to pay for the scandal-plagued social media site. Without Musk’s involvement, Twitter would be trading in the $20 range, analysts say.
Even as rumors swirled for months of Musk negotiating down Twitter’s price, influential Twitter board member and Silver Lake managing partner Egon Durban may have been insistent that he would not accept anything less than $54.20 per share, a source familiar with Durban’s thinking speculated.
If Twitter accepts Musk’s proposal, the company would withdraw its lawsuit against Musk in Delaware’s Court of Chancery. Musk would also have to withdraw a countersuit he filed against the company.
Settling for $54.20 per share could also help Musk avoid costly pre-judgment interest payments that could have driven up Twitter’s price by hundreds of millions of dollars.
