Despite Elon Musk’s efforts to get out of his deal to buy Twitter, he may be tied to it. The social media company’s shareholders plan to hold him to it.
On Tuesday, shareholders voted in favor of the $44 billion takeover deal with a value of $54.20 per share. Twitter’s stock opened Tuesday at just under $41 per share, nearly 25% below the deal price, CNN reported.
The vote came days after the business magnate’s third letter to the social media company requested to terminate their deal and included a purported $7.75 million severance payment the company made to its former head of security, Peiter Zatko.
Zatko allegedly came forward about Twitter’s security and privacy vulnerabilities.
In the letter, Musk’s lawyers said the payment —purportedly made to Zatko and his lawyers on June 28 as part of a separation agreement — violated a provision of the acquisition contract.
Twitter agreed not to provide any severance payments to employees in amounts outside “the ordinary course of business consistent with past practice,” according to the contract.
The company called out Musk’s latest effort to get out of the deal as “invalid and wrongful.”
Musk sent the first letter to terminate the deal in July, claiming that Twitter violated the agreement by misrepresenting the number of spam and fake bot accounts on its site. The company then sued him to complete the acquisition. It accused the billionaire of using bots as a reason to leave the deal and that he developed buyer’s remorse over following a market decline.
Zatko went on the stand and testified in front of the US Senate on Tuesday about what he said are Twitter’s severe security and privacy vulnerabilities, including possibly having foreign intelligence agents on its payroll.
The trial between Musk and Twitter is scheduled to start on October 17.
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