A Twitter investor is suing Elon Musk and Twitter over the handling of the $44bn (£34.9bn) bid for the company, alleging it has violated California corporate laws in a number of ways.
The class-action lawsuit accuses Elon Musk of “wrongful conduct” as his “false statements and market manipulation have created ‘chaos’ at Twitter’s headquarters in San Francisco”, and claims that Mr. Musk benefitted financially by delaying the disclosure of his significant stake in Twitter.
The proposed class-action lawsuit was filed this week at the US District Court for the Northern District of California by investor William Heresniak, who said he was acting “on behalf of himself and all others similarly situated”.
Elon Musk had put his takeover bid on hold due to a number of doubts over the number of fake accounts on the platform.
The lawsuit claims that the tweet on May 13th in which he announced his intention to put the takeover bid on hold “constituted an effort to manipulate the market for Twitter shares as he knew about the fake accounts”, and is in reality an attempt to renegotiate the purchase price, since Twitter shares are around 27% lower than the offer.
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