xAI<\/a> and SpaceX.<\/p>\nMusk said the post was made in the early hours of the morning and he did not run it past any advisers or friends first.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may not have been my wisest tweet,\u201d Musk told the court. \u201cI am not sure I would call it incredibly stupid\u2009.\u2009.\u2009.\u2009but if it led to this trial, it probably qualifies as such.\u201d<\/p>\n
Musk said his \u201con hold\u201d comments were literal and akin to saying he would be late to a meeting, not that he would not turn up. He added he did not consider whether investors would believe the takeover was now in doubt.<\/p>\n
Soon after the 2022 tweet, Musk doubled down on the bot and spam allegations, posting four days later that the deal \u201ccannot go forward\u201d. He appeared at a conference in Miami to accuse Twitter of lying in its regulatory filings and said, \u201cYou can\u2019t pay the same price for something that is much worse than they claimed.\u201d <\/p>\n
When Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal protested that the bot data was accurate, Musk sent him a poop emoji on Twitter.<\/p>\n
Twitter shares eventually fell to just above $30, a third below the deal price. The shareholders who are now suing sold their stock at the lower price, only for the acquisition to close in October on its original terms at $54.20 per share after the company\u2019s board sued Musk to close the deal.<\/p>\n
Lawyers for the plaintiffs claimed Musk was following suggestions from his bankers that he pursue a \u201crope a dope\u201d or \u201cjujitsu strategy\u201d to initially propose a lucrative deal before threatening to back out.<\/p>\n
Musk denied the claim and contended that he was \u201csimply speaking my mind\u201d and trying to save the platform when raising concerns about bots.<\/p>\n
He added it is impossible to predict the reaction of markets to his comments, which often behave like a \u201cmanic depressive\u201d, and that \u201cpeople tend to read too much into things that I do\u201d.<\/p>\n
The plaintiffs allege Musk misled the market because he knew, or should have known, that the takeover agreement did not allow him to conduct extra checks after he waived his rights to due diligence to make the deal more attractive to the Twitter board. The deal contract also had stiff penalty clauses to stop the billionaire walking away.<\/p>\n
The lawyers also showed emails to Musk and his top lieutenants from bankers at Barclays on May 9 ahead of his \u201con hold\u201d tweet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis could present you with an opportunity to revisit price,\u201d the banker wrote. \u201cIt may not be a costless ask, as you will have to be perceived as being willing to risk paying the reverse break fee. However, the threat of walking away may be sufficient to get them to agree to a lower price.\u201d<\/p>\n
A later email from Barclays after the tweet said investors were now giving the deal \u201c50\/50 odds\u201d and the share price would not move higher because they feared \u201cmore tweets with deal implications\u201d. <\/p>\n
Musk replied: \u201cMatches my understanding of things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shareholders are expected to ask for billions in damages if the jury rules in their favour.<\/p>\n
\u201cMusk believes he can say or do whatever he wants anytime he wants, regardless of the consequences,\u201d an attorney for the four plaintiffs said. After getting cold feet on the deal and struggling to sell enough Tesla stock to finance it, he started \u201ca public spectacle to trash the company and drive stock price down\u201d.<\/p>\n
Musk grew frustrated during questioning, accusing the lawyers of formulating questions \u201cdesigned to mislead the jury\u201d and trying to \u201cput words into my mouth\u201d.<\/p>\n
He added he had not had time to read his deposition transcripts or prepare for the hearing because he has \u201can insane workload, 100 hours a week\u201d.<\/p>\n
During the two-week trial plaintiffs plan to call on several of Musk\u2019s top lieutenants including his lawyer Alex Spiro, who recused himself from acting as an attorney in the case because he is also a witness. <\/p>\n
On Tuesday, they questioned the head of his family office Jared Birchall, who said Musk\u2019s tweets about the deal were made in frustration and work never stopped on the deal.<\/p>\n
Musk is scheduled to appear in a separate trial in Oakland next month. He has sued OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman in an attempt to block the $730bn start-up\u2019s transformation from a non-profit to a for-profit company. Musk was a co-founder of OpenAI in 2015 but left three years later after his attempts to buy it were rebuffed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515596,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-515595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}