Fast News
Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has said he was buying football club Manchester United Plc.
"I'm buying Manchester United ur welcome" Musk said in a tweet.
Musk has a history of making irreverent tweets, and it was not immediately clear whether he planned to pursue a deal.
Manchester United, controlled by the American Glazer family, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The football club had a market capitalisation of $2.08 billion, as of Tuesday.
Also, I’m buying Manchester United ur welcome
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 17, 2022
Anti-Glazer movement
Manchester United fans have in recent years protested against the Glazers, who bought the club for $955.51 million in 2005, due to the team's struggles on the pitch.
The anti-Glazer movement gained momentum last year after United were involved in a failed attempt to form a breakaway European Super League.
Some fans have urged Musk to buy Manchester United instead of buying Twitter. Musk is trying to exit a $44 billion agreement to buy the social media company, which has taken him to court.
Source: Reuters
Fast News
Elon Musk has sold nearly $7 billion worth of Tesla shares, amid a high-stakes legal battle with Twitter over a $44 billion buyout deal.
The Tesla boss sold some 7.9 million shares between August 5 and 9, according to filings published on the Securities and Exchange Commission's website on Tuesday.
"In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don't come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock," Musk, the world's richest man wrote on Twitter late Tuesday.
READ MORE: Elon Musk-Twitter saga, explained
Twitter is locked in a legal battle with the mercurial Tesla boss over his effort to walk away from the April agreement to buy the company, and a judge has ordered that a trial will begin in October.
Musk has filed a countersuit, accusing Twitter of fraud and alleging the social media platform misled him about key aspects of its business before he agreed to a $44 billion buyout.
The move comes after Musk sold around $8.5 billion worth of shares in the electric carmaker in April as he was preparing to finance the Twitter deal. He tweeted at the time: "No further TSLA sales planned after today."
READ MORE: Musk: Twitter deal should proceed if proof of real accounts are given
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UNcf_e7GzI[/embed]
Source: TRTWorld and agencies
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 02: Elon Musk attends The 2022 Met Gala Celebrating "In America: An Anthology of Fashion" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 02, 2022 in New York City. (Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)
Dimitrios Kambouris | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk sold 7.92 million shares of Tesla worth around $6.88 billion, according to a series of financial filings published Tuesday night.
His transactions occurred between Aug. 5 and 9, the SEC filings revealed, following Tesla's 2022 annual shareholder meeting on Aug. 4 in Austin, Texas.
Earlier this year, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO said on social media that he had "no further TSLA sales planned" after April 28.
That week, SEC filings revealed Musk had been selling a block of shares in his electric car maker worth about about $8.4 billion.
The centi-billionaire is in the midst of a contentious legal battle with Twitter, the social networking giant he agreed to acquire in April for about $44 billion or $54.20 per share.
Amid an overall market decline, Twitter's share price and the price of Tesla shares dropped. Musk said he was terminating the deal and accused Twitter of failing to give him all the information he needed to go ahead with the acquisition.
He also accused Twitter of understating the number of bots, spam and fake accounts on its platform.
By July 8, Musk told Twitter he was terminating the deal.
Twitter has sued to ensure the Musk deal goes through for the promised price, which would represent a windfall for many of its shareholders.
Tesla shares were trading nearly flat after hours on the news. Shares in Tesla closed at $850, down just over 2% for the day on Tuesday, before the CEO's insider sales were made public through SEC filings.
Centi-billionaire Elon Musk provoked Twitter and challenged the company's CEO Parag Agrawal to a "public debate" about fake accounts and spam in the midst of a contentious legal battle over a $44 billion acquisition.
Musk filed a bid with the Securities and Exchange to acquire Twitter back in April this year. After the companies agreed to move ahead with a take-private deal, Musk said he was terminating his acquisition, and accused Twitter of presenting false numbers, including in its SEC filings, pertaining to the amount of monetizable daily active users, and the number of spam and bot accounts on the social network.
Twitter then sued Musk in a Delaware chancery court to ensure the deal would go through as promised, and Musk filed counterclaims and a countersuit there on July 29.
In a series of tweets that Musk began posting just before 1 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 6, Musk interacted with a fan who had summarized his accusations about Twitter including that it was stonewalling him and giving him, "outdated data," and "a fake data set" when he asked the company for details about how it tabulates mDAU, and estimates for spam and bot accounts.
The Tesla and SpaceX CEO wrote, "Good summary of the problem. If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they're confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms. However, if it turns out that their SEC filings are materially false, then it should not."
By just after 9 a.m. Saturday morning, Musk started a Twitter poll asking his followers to vote on whether "[l]ess than 5% of Twitter daily users are fake/spam." Respondents to the informal poll could choose one of Musk's provided answers which read either "Yes" followed by three robot emoji, or "Lmaooo no." (The slang abbreviation "lmao" stands for "laughing my a-- off.)
Musk also wrote Saturday morning: "I hereby challenge @paraga to a public debate about the Twitter bot percentage. Let him prove to the public that Twitter has <5% fake or spam daily users!"
A source close to the company says a debate is not going to happen outside of a pending trial.
Attorneys for Musk did not respond to requests to comment on Saturday, and an attorney for Twitter declined to comment on Musk's Saturday tweets.
Twitter's attorneys have argued in court filings that Musk gave the company just twenty-four hours to accept his offer before he would present it directly to Twitter shareholders, and waived due diligence including a chance to seek more information on false or spam accounts.
They wrote in court filings, "Musk's repeated mischaracterizations of the merger agreement cannot change its plain words."
At an annual shareholder meeting for Tesla on Aug. 4, Musk was asked to speak about Twitter during a question-and-answer session that followed a proxy vote.
He said, drawing laughter from the audience in attendance, "I obviously have to be a little careful what I say about Twitter because there's this lawsuit and stuff." He confirmed that the only two publicly traded securities he owns are Tesla and Twitter.
And then he spoke as if he still wants to become the owner of the social networking company, a stark contrast to arguments made by Musk via his attorneys in legal filings in Delaware in which Musk argues he should not have to go through with the deal.
At the Tesla 2022 shareholders' meeting, Musk said: "I think in the case of Twitter since I use it a lot, shoot myself in the foot a lot, you know, dig my grave, etc. I think it's — I do understand the product quite well, so I think I've got a good sense of where to point the engineering team at Twitter to make it radically better."
He added that Twitter would "help accelerate" a "pretty grand vision" he had to build a business he'd been thinking about since his earliest years as a tech entrepreneur, X.com or X Corporation.
"Obviously that could be started from scratch," he said, "but I think Twitter would help accelerate that by three to five years. So it's kind of like something I've thought would be quite useful for a long time. I know what to do. Don't have to have Twitter for that but, like I said, it's probably at least a three-year accelerant and I think it's something that will be very useful to the world."
Musk didn't go into any further details at that meeting. However, he reportedly said during a town hall meeting with Twitter employees in June this year that he wanted to grow Twitter's user base to a billion people and saw Twitter as a platform that could evolve into an app like China's WeChat, a "super app," that incorporates everything from messaging, video and social media, to mobile and point-of-sales payments, with a robust app ecosystem.
Unless they reach a settlement first, Twitter and Musk are headed for a five-day trial in Delaware that starts on Oct. 17. The judge ruling on the case is Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick.
Elon Musk has accused Twitter of fraud, alleging the social media platform misled him about key aspects of its business before he agreed to a $44 billion buyout, as their court fight heats up.
The Tesla boss lodged the claim on late Thursday as he fights back against Twitter's lawsuit seeking to force him to close the deal, which he has tried to cancel.
Musk argued in the filing to a Delaware court that the number of users actually shown advertising on the platform is about 65 million lower below the firm's 238 million figure.
"Twitter's disclosures have slowly unraveled, with Twitter frantically closing the gates on information in a desperate bid to prevent the Musk Parties from uncovering its fraud," the claim alleged.
Musk last week filed his countersuit, which was finally made public on Thursday, along with a legal defence against Twitter's claim that he is contractually bound to complete the takeover deal.
The entrepreneur accused Twitter of not just deceiving him, but also of lying to US market regulators. He is asking the court to free him from the agreement and make Twitter pay him an amount in damages to be determined at trial, which set to open on October 17.
Billions of dollars are at stake, but so is the future of Twitter, which Musk has said should allow any legal speech -- an absolutist position that has sparked fears the network could be used to incite violence.
READ MORE: Elon Musk files counter-suit as legal battle over Twitter deal escalates
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'Twitter has complied in every respect'
In its own filing, Twitter rejected the mercurial billionaire's argument, calling it "as implausible and contrary to fact as it sounds."
The legal battle flows from Musk wooing Twitter's board with a $54.20 per-share offer in April, but then in July announcing he was terminating their agreement because the firm had misled him regarding its tally of fake and spam accounts.
Twitter, whose shares were up about 3.5 percent to $42.51 on Friday, has stuck by its estimates that less than five percent of the activity on the platform is due to software "bots" rather than people.
The social media platform told the court that Musk's claim that the false account figure tops 10 percent is "untenable."
Twitter also disputed Musk's assertion he has the right to walk away if its bot count is found to be wrong, since he didn't seek information on that topic when he made the buyout offer.
"Twitter has complied in every respect with the merger agreement," the company said in the filing made to Chancery Court, accusing Musk of contriving a story to escape a merger agreement that he no longer found attractive.
"Musk's counterclaims, based as they are on distortion, misrepresentation, and outright deception, change nothing," Twitter added. The social media platform has urged shareholders to endorse the deal, setting a vote on the merger for September 13.
READ MORE: Twitter stalls on document production — Musk's attorneys
Source: AFP
Elon Musk has filed claims against Twitter as he fights back against the tech firm's lawsuit demanding he be held to his $44-billion buyout deal.
Musk's counter-suit was submitted along with a legal defence against Twitter's claim that the billionaire is contractually bound to complete the deal he inked in April to buy Twitter, the Chancery Court in the state of Delaware said in a notice on Friday.
The 164-page filing was submitted as being "confidential", meaning the documents were not accessible by the public, the notice indicated.
Rules of the court, however, require Musk to submit a public version of the filing with trade secrets or other sensitive information redacted.
A judge has ordered a five-day trial over Twitter's lawsuit against Musk to begin on October 17.
The Tesla boss wooed Twitter's board with a $54.20 per-share offer, but then in July announced he was "terminating" their agreement on accusations the firm misled him regarding its tally of fake and spam accounts.
READ MORE: Elon Musk-Twitter saga, explained
Row over bots
Twitter, whose stock price closed at $41.61 on Friday, has stuck by its estimates regarding accounts run by software "bots" rather than people, and argued that Musk is contriving excuses to back out of the contract.
The social media platform has urged shareholders to endorse the deal, setting a vote on the merger for September 13.
"We are committed to closing the merger on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk," Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal and board chairperson Bret Taylor said in a copy of a letter to investors.
Billions of dollars are at stake, but so is the future of Twitter, which Musk has said should allow any legal speech — an absolutist position that has sparked fears the network could be used to incite violence.
READ MORE: Twitter reports quarterly loss, cites Musk buyout uncertainty
Source: AFP
