Twitter says Musk didn’t question issues he now cites as the reason for the parking deal

Twitter released its report on its deal negotiations with Elon Musk on Tuesday, revealing that it had opted not to ask the questions about the social media company’s business, which it now quoted as declaring the $44 billion -Dollar acquisition is “on hold”.

The report, released in Twitter’s proxy statement, which outlines what shareholders need to know to vote on the deal, paints a picture of Mr Musk rushing to strike a deal with his “best and last” offer to complete.

Mr Musk negotiated the Twitter deal over the weekend of April 23-24 without conducting due diligence, the proxy statement shows.

Since signing the deal on April 25, he has questioned the accuracy of Twitter’s public records of spam accounts making up less than 5 percent of its user base, claiming it must be at least 20 percent. This is despite Twitter stating in its filings that the numbers could be higher than estimates.
Independent researchers have predicted that 9-15 percent of the millions of Twitter profiles are bots.

Mr Musk tweeted on Tuesday that Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal has refused to provide evidence of his company’s valuation and that the deal cannot move forward until he does. Twitter’s proxy statement shows that Mr Musk made no effort to obtain information on the matter in the run-up to the deal.

“Mr. Musk has not asked to enter into a non-disclosure agreement or to request any non-public information about Twitter from Twitter,” Twitter said in its proxy statement.

The proxy statement doesn’t mention the threats Mr Musk tweeted not to go ahead with the deal unless he gets to the bottom of how many spam accounts are on the platform.

Twitter investors were convinced that a deal at the agreed price was no longer an option. Twitter shares were trading at $37.55 Tuesday afternoon, a discount of more than 30 percent to the transaction price of $54.20 per share.