WASHINGTON – Twitter shareholders voted Tuesday to approve a proposed US$44 billion bid by Elon Musk to buy the company, even as Musk seeks to escape the deal.
Twitter confirmed that a preliminary count showed that it had enough votes to approve the deal, according to United Press International (UPI) cited The Verge.
Musk initially attempted to buy the company but then sent a letter in July saying he was backing out of the deal. He argued that Twitter has not complied with its contractual obligations to provide accurate assessments of how many fake user accounts are on its system.
The social media company then sued Musk, accusing him of efforts to trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value and walk away from the deal.
Musk then countersued, alleging that Twitter breached provisions of the merger agreement. He cited claims made by Twitter whistleblower Peiter Zatko. Zatko has accused Twitter of lying about its security plan and said that 50 per cent of its servers were outdated. Twitter previously said that Zatko was fired for ineffective leadership and poor performance.
The trial is expected to begin Oct 17 it added, even though Musk’s lawyers had sought to move the trial back to mid-November.
Also on Tuesday, Zatko testified before the Senate judiciary committee, saying that Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal had covered up security failures from federal regulators and the company’s board.
