Business Insider: Musk Postpones Twitter Purchase Due to Putin’s May 9 Speech

It became known that the reason why the owner of SpaceX and Tesla, Elon Musk, decided to postpone the purchase of Twitter in May, was due to the upcoming speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin on the occasion of Victory Day on May 9, about this informs edition of Business Insider, citing data released during the trial.

According to the publication, in a personal correspondence with the Morgan Stanley banker who handled the purchase deal, on the eve of May 9, Musk wrote that he would like to wait for Putin’s speech to make sure “we are not moving towards a third world war” – in this case ” buying Twitter does not make sense,” the publication said.

According to the lawyer of Twitter, these statements of the businessman prove that the refusal to buy the social network was caused by concerns for personal finances, and not by Twitter’s failure to comply with its obligations.

On May 9, Putin delivered a speech at a military parade on Red Square on the occasion of the 77th anniversary of Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany. During his speech, he congratulated the military on the holiday, spoke about the reasons for the start of a special military operation in Ukraine and international events. In his speech, the head of state did not raise the topic of the “third world war” or similar scenarios for the development of the situation.

Earlier it became known that Musk found a new reason for terminating the deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion – a statement by the company’s former head of security, Pater Zatko, who was fired earlier this year. He reported shortcomings in the work of the social network with personal data, including the use of outdated software. He also drew attention to the fact that the company’s management hid information about violations of cybersecurity rules, including hacking user accounts. Twitter called these claims false.

The purchase agreement was reached in April, but on July 8, Musk officially abandoned the purchase of Twitter and notified the company about it. The reason was an inflated number of real Twitter users due to the large number of robot accounts. This was also reported by Zatko, who said that the company’s management does not know the exact number of fake accounts. In turn, Twitter claims that the share of such accounts does not exceed 5% of the total number of users. According to the billionaire, fake accounts can exceed 20-25% of all Twitter users.

Later, the management of the social network filed a lawsuit against him in order to close the deal. According to the company, Musk is pulling out of the deal due to the depreciation of Twitter shares. Now they cost about $38 apiece, while Musk originally offered $54.2 for them. At the end of July, Musk filed a counterclaim, details of which were not disclosed.

Subscribe on “Vedomosti” in Telegram and stay up to date with the main news of the economy and business