Twitter starts legal action against Elon Musk

Musk first acquired a 9.2% stake in Twitter in April. He was initially offered a seat on the board, but rejected that and instead offered to buy the whole company for $44bn.

Twitter accepted the offer, but relations between the two sides quickly soured over the number of fake or spam accounts on the social platform. Twitter claims it is around 5% but Musk disputes that figure, arguing that it is closer to 20%.

Last week the Tesla and SpaceX billionaire announced he was walking away from the deal, citing Twitter’s lack of clarity over spam accounts.

But late on Tuesday evening BST, Twitter chair Bret Taylor tweeted that the Silicon Valley business had started legal action

He said: “The Twitter board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement.

“We are confident that we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery.”

In the filing, Twitter’s lawyers said Musk’s exit strategy was “a model of hypocrisy” and that his claims were “pretexts and lack any merit”. They also accuse Musk of “acting against this deal since the market started turning, and has breached the merger agreement repeatedly in the process”.

Musk has yet to comment on the legal action.