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Elon Musk will not appear Thursday for much-anticipated testimony in a Twitter lawsuit aimed at forcing a $44 billion takeover of the company. The billionaire reversed course earlier this week, pledging to execute his $54.20 per share offer on his platform on popular social media on original terms. It could still be a few months before the contract is finalized, but the October 17th test run is almost certainly on hold.
That means Musk will be forced to submit to a pre-trial investigation into his allegations that his Twitter executives hid the number of robots and spammers on his account from the platform’s more than 230 million users. It means that no pressure is applied. The application was scheduled to begin at 9:30 am at a law firm in Austin, Texas.
The New York Times, citing an anonymous source, said Musk’s rep had unsuccessfully negotiated with his Twitter account over the past few weeks to lower the price of the deal before updating the original offer.
Musk was targeting discounts of up to 30%, which would have valued the company at around $31 billion, but Twitter turned down the offer, the paper said. Last week’s discussion about a discount of about 10% ultimately did not progress,
Lawyers for both sides are still working out the details of the final settlement of the lawsuit, but banks and other investors are pushing off his original $12.5 billion debt financing package. The lender is managed by Morgan Stanley. Other investors include Oracle CEO Larry Ellison. Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Wednesday about Musk’s decision to skip testimony.
Delaware Court Judge Catherine St. J. McCormick said Wednesday that neither side has yet asked to stay the case and the next trial is moving forward. In a securities filing earlier this week, Musk offered to proceed with the deal if Twitter’s lawsuit was shelved.