Elon Musk, Twitter agree to postpone Tesla CEO’s deposition

This is not the first time a deposition related to the Twitter-Musk legal battle has been postponed.
Last week, the deposition of Musk and that of Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal was postponed.

Musk took a U-turn on Tuesday – just two weeks before the trial is slated to start on October 17 – and offered to go ahead with the deal at the original price value of $54.20 per share.

The
NYT reported that weeks before Musk declared his bid to own Twitter was back on the table, his representatives spoke with the company several times about renegotiating the deal at a lower price.

Musk sought a discount of as much as 30%, a proposal that would have valued the social media company at roughly $31 billion. However, Twitter rebuffed the proposal.

The deliberations then continued and the discount was reduced to about 10%, which would have allowed Musk to pay about $39.6 billion. Those talks, too, ultimately collapsed and Twitter’s market cap as of Wednesday was $39.2 billion.

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The Tesla CEO and the world’s richest man is also expected to face an uphill task as he tries to close the deal after drawing Twitter and its executives through the mud on social media and courtrooms over the past few months.

Musk might also encounter some troubles in financing the now-back-on-track deal as
Apollo Global Management Inc and Sixth Street Partners – two investment firms looking to provide him financing earlier this year for the $44-billion buyout of Twitter Inc – are no longer in the fray to go ahead with their commitment.

Apollo, Sixth Street, and other investors were looking to commit over $1 billion in financing for the deal.

Industry experts suggest that Musk’s U-turn on buying Twitter could not have come at a worse time for the banks funding a large portion of the deal and they could be facing significant losses due to an unfavorable financing environment.