Most Twitter contributors vote in favor of selling to Musk’s sources

Sept 12 (Reuters) – The majority of Twitter shareholders (TWTR.N) They voted to sell the social media company for $44 billion to Elon Musk, people familiar with the proceeds said Monday.

The deadline for shareholders to vote on the deal is Tuesday, the sources said, but enough investors had voted by Monday evening to ascertain the outcome.

The sources requested anonymity before an official announcement. Twitter and Musk’s representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Musk told Twitter he would not go ahead with the acquisition, arguing that he had been misled about spam accounts on the platform and had not been notified of the company’s pay settlement with one of its top executives. The two sides are due to fight their battle in court next month. Read more

Shareholders were widely expected to vote in favor after a stock market slump made Musk’s $54.20-a-share deal for Twitter, signed in April, look expensive in the current environment. Twitter posts are now hovering around $41.

Earlier on Monday, Twitter said the payments made to the whistleblower did not breach any terms of its sale to Musk, after the world’s richest man made another attempt to scrap the deal.

Twitter’s lawyers said Musk’s reasons for wanting to back out of the deal were “false and false.”

Last week, Musk’s lawyers said Twitter’s failure to obtain his consent before making the $7.75 million payment to whistleblower Peter Zatko and his attorney violated the merger agreement, which limits when Twitter can make such payments.

Zatko, who was sacked by Twitter in January as the company’s chief security officer, accused the social media company last month of falsely claiming it had a robust security plan, and of making misleading statements about its defenses against hackers and spam accounts.

The informant will meet with the US Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to discuss the allegations.

“With the Musk camp now allowed to include Zatko’s allegations in his testimony for the State of Delaware, tomorrow’s session will be closely watched by Street,” Wedbush analysts wrote in a note.

The Twitter vs Musk trial is set to begin October 17th at Delaware Chancery Court.

Musk’s lawyers, who is also the CEO of electric car maker Tesla Inc (TSLA.O)were not immediately available for comment.

Additional reporting by Sofia Herbst and Anirban Sen Additional reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru Editing: Anil de Silva and Matthew Lewis

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