Twitter shareholders vote for Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover

CNN Business
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Elon Musk may be fighting teeth and nails get out of his bargain to buy Twitter, but the social media company’s shareholders plan to get him involved.

The vast majority of Twitter

(TWTR) Shareholders on Tuesday voted in favor of Musk’s $44 billion acquisition, valued at $54.20 per share. The company’s stock opened Tuesday at just under $41 per share, nearly 25% below the transaction price.

A preliminary count indicated that 98.6% of the votes cast on Tuesday were in favor of the deal, Twitter reported in a statement.

“Twitter is ready and willing to complete the merger with Mr. Musk’s subsidiaries immediately and, in any event, no later than September 15, 2022, the second business day after all previous conditions have been met, which is the timeline required by the merger agreement.”

The vote came days after Musk voted Twitter’s third message They seek to terminate their deal, with that sum tied to an alleged $7.75 million in severance payments, which the company paid its former security chief, Peter Zatko, who later blow the whistle About alleged security and privacy vulnerabilities.

In the letter, Musk’s lawyers claimed that the amount – which was said to have been paid to Zatko and his lawyer on June 28 as part of the severance agreement – violated one of the terms of the takeover contract. Twitter agreed not to make any severance payments to employees in amounts outside the “normal course of business consistent with past practices,” according to the contract.

Twitter Criticize Musk’s latest attempt to exit the deal was described as “invalid and illegal.”

Musk first sent a letter to terminate the deal in July, alleging that Twitter violated the agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake accounts on its platform. Twitter sued Musk to complete the acquisition, accusing the billionaire of using botnets as an excuse to exit a deal that he developed buyer’s remorse for after the market plummeted.

zatko Witnessed Before the US Senate on Tuesday over what he claimed were serious security and privacy weaknesses on Twitter, including the potential for foreign intelligence agents on their payroll.

The case between Musk and Twitter is scheduled to go to trial on October 17.

CNN Business’s Claire Duffy contributed to this report