Twitter deal temporarily on hold: Elon Musk

Elon Musk and Twitter reached an agreement for the latter's takeover on April 25 (Illustration: Moneycontrol)

The deal to acquire Twitter, which was announced last month, has been "temporarily put on hold", Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on May 13.

The deal has been halted till it is ascertained whether spam or fake accounts represent less than five percent of the microblogging site's total userbase, said Musk, who had, on April 25, signed definite agreements with Twitter for the latter's takeover for $44 billion.

"Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users (sic)," Musk tweeted.

Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022

The disclosure came days after Musk, shortly after sealing the deal to acquire Twitter, said that one of his priorities would be to remove "spam bots" from the platform.

Twitter had, in the exchange filing, also noted that it faced several risks until the deal with Musk is closed, such as whether advertisers would continue to spend on the platform and "potential uncertainty regarding our future plans and strategy."

Musk's deal to buy Twitter, even if it sails through, is expected to take months to come to fruition as the billionaire needs to secure the finances. He has raised $13 billion in loans secured against Twitter and a $12.5 billion margin loan tied to his own Tesla Inc stock.

Over the past couple of weeks, he has been speaking about reducing the operational costs of Twitter, and has tweeted about eliminating the salaries of the company's board of directors, which he said could result in about $3 million in savings.

With inputs from Reuters