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Elon Musk’s will-he-won’t-he dance to buy Twitter has been going on for months.
Events were set in motion when Musk began buying more Twitter shares in January.
Now both parties are ensnared in lawsuits, and a resolution is nowhere in sight.
Elon Musk and Twitter’s chaotic saga rages on, and it’s nowhere near resolved.
It’s a tale that’s spanned nine months – beginning with Musk buying up Twitter shares in January, all the way to the company’s ex-security chief-turned-whistleblower appearing before Congress on Tuesday.
If you’re hazy on some of the events within that time period, we’ve compiled a full timeline of developments, from Musk tweeting a poop emoji at CEO Parag Agrawal to Twitter and Musk suing each other.
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By March 14, Musk had a 5% stake in the social media company — a threshold that the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) deems large enough to require a public disclosure.
The Washington Post estimates that the Tesla CEO saved about $156 million, or 30%, by delaying disclosure until after the SEC’s March 25 deadline and buying the stock at a lower price.
Andrew Kelly/Reuters
The next day, Twitter told the SEC it intended to appoint Musk to its board of directors.
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Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced on Twitter that the billionaire had decided not to join the board after the Tesla CEO had spent weeks tweeting about his ideas for Twitter, including discussing turning the company’s headquarters into a homeless shelter or adding an edit button.
“I believe this is for the best,” Agrawal said.
Reuters
The deal valued the company at $44 billion.
Twitter threw up a corporate defensive measure called a poison pill designed to stop Musk’s hostile-takeover attempt.
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In accepting the deal, Musk waived all due diligence — relinquishing his right as a buyer to further investigate the state of the company ahead of acquiring it.
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He posted that tweet as his team investigated the company’s claim that less than 5% of its accounts are fake and spam.
Agrawal posted a thread on Twitter explaining how the company settled on that 5% figure. Musk responded to the thread with a poop emoji.
REUTERS/Adrees Latif
He claimed that Twitter was “actively resisting and thwarting [Musk’s] information rights.” In the letter, he threatened to abandon the purchase agreement and said he had the right not to see the deal through.
Alex Kantrowitz
The billionaire also attended his first all-hands meeting with the company’s staff.
Jed Jacobsohn/AP
Twitter’s board said it would take legal action to enforce the original agreement.
Source: SEC
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In the first pretrial hearing, on July 19, Twitter scored its first win against Musk after the judge agreed to an expedited five-day trial in October.
“The longer the merger transaction remains in limbo, the larger a cloud of uncertainty is cast over the company,” Chancery Court Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick said.
AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill
Musk alleged the company is operating a “scheme to mislead investors about the company’s prospects.”
In the countersuit, Musk’s team argues he is entitled to drop the deal because he claims Twitter is intentionally “miscounting” the number of spam accounts on its platform.
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Some of Musk’s closest associates, as well as Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, were included.
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On August 23, The Washington Post published an explosive 84-page whistleblower complaint from renowned hacker and former Twitter security chief Peiter Zatko.
In the complaint, the security chief — better known as “Mudge” — accused the company of “lying” to Elon Musk about spam accounts on its site, and having poor security practices that could violate a previous FTC settlement agreement.
A Twitter spokesperson said the claims are “riddled with inaccuracies” and that Zatko was fired for “ineffective leadership and poor performance.”
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His team also filed a motion to amend its countersuit to include the whistleblower’s allegations.
In the second pre-trial hearing, in August, Musk’s team scored a small win when the judge partially granted Musk’s demand for Twitter to produce more data on scam accounts.
However, the judge called the billionaire’s original request for “trillions upon trillions” of data points “absurdly broad.”
Patrick Pleul/AP
The judge allowed the billionaire to amend his countersuit to include allegations from Twitter’s whistleblower, but she had some harsh words for his legal team — calling their efforts to cooperate with Twitter’s discovery process “suboptimal.”
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That happened well before he officially said he planned to back out of the purchase. The billionaire said he wouldn’t want to buy the company “if we’re heading into World War 3” with Russia.
Source: Insider
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In its most recent letter to the social media company, Musk’s legal team argued that Twitter had breached its agreement with Musk in allegedly offering Zatko a $7.75 million severance package.
Source: Insider
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That puts the fate of the deal entirely in the hands of the court case, which is set for a five-day trial in October.
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