Twitter shares have jumped amid reports that billionaire Elon Musk has reversed course on his plan to buy the social media firm.
Musk, the owner of rocket firm SpaceX and electric car manufacturer Tesla, is again proposing to buy Twitter at the original offer price of $54.20 a share, Bloomberg reported earlier on Tuesday, citing unnamed sources.
The sources said that Musk had sent the proposal to Twitter in a letter.
Shares in the social media firm rapidly rose after the report was released, before trading was halted.
The billionaire announced earlier this year that he would be scrapping his original $44 billion offer to buy the company as Twitter had made “misleading representations,” and had not “complied with its contractual obligations” in providing information related to bots.
Twitter sues Elon Musk
Twitter later filed a 62-page lawsuit against Musk after the billionaire refused “to honour his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders,” the firm said.
“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he — unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law — is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away,” the court filing read.
In August, Musk sold 7.92 million shares of Tesla worth $6.9 billion, according to a series of financial filings in the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Admitting that he could need the funds in his legal battle against Twitter, Musk tweeted: “In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.”
Follow us on
