Companies

Elon Musk ends $44 billion Twitter deal over ‘misleading representations’

Tesla CEO says company has misled him on issue of spam bots but Twitter has vowed to take Musk to court to enforce deal

Musk’s deal with Twitter had included a provision that if it fell apart, the party breaking the agreement would pay a termination fee of $1 billion, under certain circumstances. Picture: Getty Images

Elon Musk said he’s terminating his $44 billion agreement to acquire Twitter Inc. and take it private, saying the company has made “misleading representations” over the number of spam bots on the service.

Twitter hasn’t “complied with its contractual obligations” to provide information about how to assess how prevalent the bots are on the social medial service,” Musk said on Friday in a letter to Twitter as part of a regulatory filing.

Twitter said it ...