Elon Musk wanted to “slow down” the $44 billion acquisition of Twitter just months after Russia invaded Ukraine. The entrepreneur said in private messages that buying Twitter does not make sense given the possible Third World War.
The correspondence was made public on Sept. 6 at a hearing over the postponement of a lawsuit regarding Musk’s deal to buy Twitter . The text messages were sent on May 8 to a Morgan Stanley banker financing part of Musk’s deal. In them, the billionaire quoted the upcoming speech by Vladimir Putin. The official reason for pulling out of the deal was Twitter’s alleged wrongful concealment of data on bots and spam accounts.
“Let’s slow down for just a few days,” Musk’s lawyer quoted a Twitter post during the hearing. “Putin’s speech tomorrow is really important. There’s no point in buying Twitter if we’re heading for World War III.”
Musk’s attorney, Alex Spiro, responded that the characterization of the texts in court was “complete nonsense, as the full text message chain shows.” The full text of the conversation is expected to be entered into the court record next week.
Musk signed an agreement to buy and privatize Twitter in April. When he said in July that he was pulling out of the deal, Twitter sued almost immediately to enforce the contract and force Musk to buy the company at the agreed price. Many believe that Musk will lose the lawsuit, which is due in early October.
Reading the messages, a Twitter lawyer said that Musk was in breach of contract, and the only motivation for exiting the deal was personal financial problems. Musk’s lawyers believe that Twitter has not found any evidence to support this theory.
Source: insider
