The best leverage Twitter has is to threaten to take away his twitter account - hit him where it hurts.
True, but that is because nobody tries to go after his stupid moves. Even the SEC seems to have given up. Twitter can absolutely force him to honor the contract he signed; but it's true it's unlikely they will do it, but they may. Why write up a big contract like this if there was no intention to enforce it in the first place?
> The best leverage Twitter has is to threaten to take away his twitter account - hit him where it hurts.
Yes, that would be extremely funny, and a big relief for everyone.
Of course, everything can be negotiated. But should the other party not want to negotiate, they have the legal means to force him to buy.
I don't know why people have such a moralistic view on contract law. What should the consequences be of breaking a contract? A fine is pretty normal and enforceable. Stop acting like its some kind of personal affront to your ethics that someone agrees to buy something, watch the market tank and rethink the price. Imagine you agreed to buy a house and the house gets set on fire, dropping the value by 30%? Wouldn't you try to renegotiate or get out of the contract? Now do that with billions of dollars.
Those contingencies are written into the offer. This is why you have a real estate agent, they know what they're doing. You don't need to illegally break the contract, because it'll already be in the contract.
Perhaps. But Musk is wrecking Twitter at almost no cost to himself. His lawyers will try proving that Twitter board lied to investors for years. So current management is a toast.
And no one would be willing to buy Twitter at current valuation. Except Bill Gates perhaps....
He agreed to buy based on twitter public filings. Those might turn out to be a lie. Ask Mike Lynch how selling a company based on SEC filings filled with lies ends up.
https://www.cio.com/article/304397/the-hp-autonomy-lawsuit-t...
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252512620/British-court-...
> Delaware courts have almost never found an MAE. An MAE has to be something that would “substantially threaten the overall earnings potential of the target in a durationally-significant manner,” the courts have said; there is a rule of thumb that an MAE requires a 40% decrease in long-term profitability. If it turned out that 6% or 20% or 50% of Twitter accounts are bots, that will be embarrassing and might even reduce Twitter’s future advertising revenue, but will it be an MAE? No.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-13/elon-m...
Basically, legally Musk is already past this point -- he signed a contract promising to buy Twitter without doing any real investigation. I've felt for a while he's looking for ways to squirm back out, but he legally can't (unless he simply can't raise the funds at all, that's what the $1 billion "exit fee" you may have heard about is).
Of course it's possible Elon will simply ignore the law, as in practice the rich can often simply ignore laws they don't like with limited consequences.