Musk Sued by Twitter Shareholder Over 'Market Manipulation'
When you are as enigmatic as Elon Musk, every public decision you make could trigger a trend-wave in the culture, assigning new value to whatever it is that the world’s richest man has gotten involved in. And, when you’re as eccentric as Elon Musk, you may find yourself making a whole lost of splashes in the pop culture pond.
This is the basic thesis behind a new lawsuit facing the Tesla CEO, whose bid to buy Twitter has suddenly become a seriously fraught endeavor.
Elon Musk faces a lawsuit accusing him of pushing down Twitter’s stock price in order to either give himself an escape hatch from his $44 billion buyout bid, or room to negotiate a discount.
Advertisement - story continues belowThe suit alleges the billionaire Tesla boss tweeted and made statements intended to create doubt about the deal, which has roiled the social media platform for weeks.
Filed Wednesday by a shareholder, the claim seeks class action status and calls on a federal court in San Francisco to back the validity of the deal and award shareholders any damages allowed by law.
Musk’s concerns with Twitter revolve around their internal accounting of phony users, with the SpaceX chief insinuating that the true number of fake accounts and bots is much higher than the company has reported.
