Dear Mr Musk, stop bleating about Twitter bots and get on with it
You’re on the hook, Elon,so stop bleating about bots and cease speculating about a lower takeover price. When we agreed a bid at $54.20 a share, in cash, you waived your right to conduct due diligence. Look busy and use your best efforts to get the deal over the line, as you’re legally obliged to do.
That wasn’t exactly the tone of the board of Twitter’s statement on Tuesday about how it is “committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms”, but may as well have been. After days of diverting comments by Elon Musk, Twitter is trying to bring the script back to basics. A $44bn (£35bn) deal has been agreed and a bidder can’t speculate about putting it “on hold” while he takes another look under the bonnet.
On the pure rights and wrongs of the standoff, sympathy lies entirely with Twitter. Once takeover terms have been agreed, it shouldn’t matter if the ratio of worthless bots – or fake accounts – on the social media site is under 5% (as the company says) or a multiple of that figure. Musk had his chance to demand proof of 5% before he entered a binding contract, but didn’t take it. Since one of his big pre-bid boasts was about how he would weed out spam content and restore Twitter to real users, he can’t claim he was unaware of the debate around the accuracy of Twitter’s measurement system. His behaviour is disgraceful.
It may also be effective, however. Twitter’s board will find itself with a choice of only two unattractive options if Musk says he’s only prepared to proceed at a lower bid price. The first would be to refuse to play ball and ask the courts to enforce the takeover agreement. That path involves a long battle and, almost certainly, another whack to a share price that has already collapsed to
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