(CelebrityAccess) — On Monday, billionaire investor Elon Musk proposed a deal to acquire social media platform Twitter, potentially bringing an end to three months of acrimonious legal battles over the deal.
According to the New York Times, sources familiar with the deal said that Musk would acquire Twitter at $54.20 per share, the price he originally offered in April before attempting to back away from the deal.
Twitter, which sued Musk in July after the deal appeared to fall apart, said it intends to close the transaction at the offer price, but declined to state it was dropping its lawsuit against Musk.
Musk started backing away from the Twitter deal in May, claiming he needed more data on the number of spam and fake accounts on the social media service, sending Twitter’s stock into a tailspin. In July, he announced he was abandoning his proposal to acquire Twitter after the company failed to provide him with information about fake accounts, prompting Twitter to take legal action four days later.
News of the deal comes just two weeks before the trial between Twitter and Musk was set to begin in the Delaware Chancery Court on October 17th.
Legal experts told the Associated Press that they weren’t surprised the deal is moving forward, noting that Musk did not appear to have a strong case.
“On the legal merits, his case didn’t look that strong,” Eric Talley, a law professor at Columbia University told the AP. “It kind of seemed like a pretty simple buyer’s remorse case.”
“I think he recognized that litigation is not going well on his part,” Ann Lipton, a professor of corporate governance at Tulane Law School told the New York Times.
