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https://www.ft.com/content/88161509-efe4-4b7b-8465-d66645b445d0
Elon Musk defrauded Twitter shareholders by talking down the company as he tried to renegotiate or delay his $44bn deal to buy it in 2022, a California jury has found.
Jurors in San Francisco on Friday delivered a verdict in favour of a group of investors who sued the billionaire, saying they had lost out because of Musk’s “misleading statements” in April 2022 during his takeover of the social media platform.
It marks a high-profile legal defeat for the world’s richest man, who could be liable for substantial damages, which will be determined at a later date.
The federal class action suit centred on a series of tweets Musk wrote in April 2022, weeks after committing to buy the social media company for $44bn.
He said the deal was “temporarily on hold” until Twitter executives could demonstrate that “spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users”. Twitter stock fell into the low $30s from a deal price of $54.20 a share, as investors priced in the risk of it collapsing.
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FT: Jury finds Musk defrauded Twitter investors during buyout