Twitter shareholders to vote on Elon Musk’s deal, grant his bot accounts request

Twitter shareholders will meet two months from now to vote on Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition deal, amid the investor’s threat to revoke the offer, after suspending talks over doubt on actual bot accounts on the platform.

The meeting is scheduled to hold late July or early August. The disclosure comes days after Tesla Chief Executive Officer threatened to end acquisition talks over refusal to hand him user base data, although, the social media company has now decided to grant him access to the information.

Musk will be given a special access to over 500 million daily tweets on the microblogging site, to enable the billionaire determine the percentage of bot or fake accounts out of the over 200 million users on the platform.

The investor had demanded access after disclosing his doubt over the methodology used by Twitter to arrive at less than 5% spam accounts, which Musk said could be more. He said discussion on the deal would progress if the management proves the data.

However, earlier this week, his legal team said Twitter are in “material breach” of the deal if they continue to deny Musk access to users’ data, as the spam accounts were vital to his decision to completely acquire Twitter.

Read also: Elon Musk’s wealth rises, as four top billionaires suffer N2.85 trillion loss in one day

He had previously bought 9.2% ownership stake in Twitter in April, but he later opted to acquire 100%, in a bid to take the social media company private, which will allow him restructure the operation of the firm, without shareholder bottlenecks.

Musk had also hinted that should the spam accounts be more than Twitter management reported in their filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the $44 billion offered for the acquisition will be cut by the percentage of bot accounts.

With the billion-dollar deal at risk of failing, the board of the social media company may yield to his demands, considering the allegation of “material breach” allows Musk to walk away from the deal without paying a $1 billion break fee.

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