A Twitter investor has accused Tesla CEO Elon Musk of market manipulation in order to get a better deal in his proposed $44 billion takeover of the social media platform. The investor – Giuseppe Pampena – said that Musk’s decision to go ahead with the purchase this week after constantly attacking Twitter in public “essentially acknowledged that he had been bluffing all along about backing out of the deal.”
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The deal between Musk and Twitter was almost on the verge of completion in April earlier this year but the billionaire decided to back out. Musk blamed the number of fake users on the platform for his decision and said that 20 per cent of the total users on Twitter are actually bots.
The claim was completely dismissed by Twitter officials as they put the actual number somewhere around 5 per cent. In the next few months, Twitter also provided Musk with an insight into their books and even announced that they were open to sharing their company data with Musk’s lawyers.
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“Musk proceeded to make statements, send tweets, and engage in conduct designed to create doubt about the deal and drive Twitter’s stock down substantially in order to create leverage that Musk hoped to use to either back out of the purchase or re-negotiate the buyout price by as much as 25 percent which, if accomplished, would result in an $11 billion reduction in the buyout consideration,” Pampena wrote in the lawsuit according to a Bloomberg report. “Musk’s conduct was fraudulent and illegal.”
Last week, Musk made another U-turn ahead of the Twitter trial as he decided to go forward with the takeover deal with the original valuation of $54.20 per share.
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