Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter has just avoided a long vetting process. The purchase was poised to close, according to Yahoo! Finance. It may have taken months for government authorities to conduct a more thorough evaluation of the acquisition deal. “According to the antitrust legislation, transactions must be disclosed to the government of the United States so that they may be scrutinized by either the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission.
“The purchase would have faced a months-long probe if either agency had filed a second request’ for papers,” Yahoo! Finance said. The New York Times reported last month that Twitter was ready to “enforce” the agreement if required. The board of Twitter and Mr. Musk “agreed to a deal for $54.20 per share,” according to The New York Times. “This arrangement, we feel, is in the best interests of all shareholders. We plan to complete the acquisition and put the merger agreement into effect.”
Twitter had said in a news statement that it was “committed to completing the deal as quickly as practical on the agreed price and parameters.” Musk is said to have objected to a potential distortion of the number of “bot” accounts. According to SpaceXMania, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that platform filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission about spam accounts were maybe false. He believes the true number of spam accounts is likely to be “far” larger than Twitter’s first estimate.
“While this is four times what Twitter reports, the percentage of fake/spam accounts might be *much* greater. My offer was predicated on the accuracy of Twitter’s SEC filings “Musk sent out a tweet. “The CEO of Twitter openly declined to offer evidence of 5% yesterday. Until he does, this transaction will not be able to go ahead.”
Shareholders were previously exhorted to vote in support of the sale by the platform. In a filing with the SEC, Twitter informed shareholders that, “If the merger is finalized, you will be entitled to receive $54.20 in cash, without interest and subject to any applicable withholding taxes,” for each share of our common stock that they held (unless they have previously correctly exercised their appraisal rights).
Source: YahooFinance