Elon Musk has sought to end his $44bn (£36bn) bid to buy Twitter, alleging multiple breaches of the agreement. The announcement is the latest twist in the long-running saga after the world’s richest man decided to buy Twitter in April.
Mr Musk said he backed out because Twitter failed to provide enough information about the number of spam and fake accounts. Twitter says it plans to take legal action to enforce the agreement.
In May, Mr Musk said the deal was “temporarily halted” as he awaited data on the number of fake and spam accounts on Twitter. The billionaire businessman had sought evidence to support the company’s claim that spam and bot accounts accounted for less than 5% of its total users.
In a letter filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr Musk’s lawyer said Twitter had failed or declined to provide this information.
“Sometimes Twitter has ignored Mr Musk’s requests, sometimes it has rejected them for reasons that appear to be unjustified, and sometimes it has claimed to comply while giving Mr Musk incomplete or unusable information,” the letter reads.
Spam accounts are designed to spread information to large numbers of people and manipulate the way they interact with the platform. On Thursday, Twitter said that it removes around one million such accounts every day.
Mr Musk believes that spam or bot accounts may account for 20% or more of Twitter’s users. Twitter shares fell 7% in extended trading following the announcement.