Elon Musk is facing the prospect of a day in court as a group of Twitter shareholders served him with a writ alleging he is deliberately depressing the price of the social media giant.
The Tesla boss has made a US44$bn bid for Twitter and the plaintiffs argue that recent tweets put out by the billionaire were designed either to enable him to walk away from the deal or else negotiate a better price.
In particular, the writ highlights a recent tweet from Musk that the deal cannot move forward without more detail from Twitter on the level of ‘spambots’ or automated accounts in use on the platform
Filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, the complaint also names San Francisco-based Twitter as a defendant in the lawsuit, which is for compensation and damages that will be distributed to shareholders.
Musk is already facing another probe by US regulator the SEC over the time he took to disclose he had built up a 9% stake in Twitter ahead of his bid, a delay that generated an estimated paper profit of around US$156mln.
It is the latest in several run-ins with the SEC already over his use of Twitter to disclose potentially share price-sensitive information.