Financing falters: Twitter takeover is said to be on the brink

Is Elon Musk looking for reasons to burst the Twitter deal? According to insiders, talks with potential investors have been sluggish in recent weeks.

Financing falters: Twitter takeover is said to be on the brink

Is Elon Musk looking for reasons to burst the Twitter deal? According to insiders, talks with potential investors have been sluggish in recent weeks. According to Musk's team, Twitter cannot dispel doubts about the number of user accounts.

According to a Washington Post report, the planned billion-dollar takeover of Twitter by Tesla boss Elon Musk is in serious jeopardy. Musk's staff came to the conclusion that the short message service's data on fake user accounts could not be verified, the newspaper reports, citing three people familiar with the process.

His team has halted certain discussions related to funding the $44 billion deal, one of the insiders said. Including probably with a party that was in discussion as a likely donor. So there will probably be a new approach. Details were not given. A statement from Twitter was initially not available.

One of the insiders told the Washington Post that talks with potential investors had already slowed down in the past few weeks. In addition to the doubts about the number of spam accounts, the dwindling enthusiasm could also be due to the fall in the Twitter share price. Before Musk's takeover bid, the stock was just under $50 at the beginning of May, most recently only around $39. Musk may feel like he's paying too much for the platform, the newspaper said.

After the report was published, the group's shares fell almost five percent in after-hours trading. According to media reports, Musk had threatened to call off the deal if Twitter did not provide further information about false accounts. In the event of a withdrawal, both sides had agreed to a contractual penalty of one billion dollars each.