>"one expects that someone will prevail upon Musk to settle before that happens"
My question is "Settle how?" Pay a penalty and still not own Twitter? That seems like an unlikely outcome to me. Why would he do that? Why would he not simply complete the transaction instead?
Pay $1b and walk away is his best outcome. That's if he wins. If he loses, he may have to pay $50b for something worth $20b. Settling will be somewhere in between - maybe paying $10-15b to walk away.
Of course, if he settles, it will be with a sealed agreement. And then he can publicly claim victory...
There are plenty more less scrupulous options, like $x00mil in shitcoins to buy an amicable judgment. You could even go extreme budged and start popping Twitter lawyers at $1mil a head, nobody would want to represent them after aa couple of weeks.
The guy bought 10% of the company in secret after being a power Twitter user for 11 years and deciding he could unlock its languishing potential, and then gave them a take-it-or-leave-it, no diligence offer. I don't think Twitter was "selling" anything.
Except Elon Musk went to Twitter with a seller-friendly request and signed away his right to due diligence.
Twitter never "lied" about anything. Heck, they barely negotiated anything at all. Elon Musk arrived, bought 9% of the company (and had a number of SEC violations while doing so since he didn't file various forms in time), and then threatened to enter into a hostile takeover of Twitter.
Do you have evidence to the contrary? Or is your viewpoint fully driven by blind-faith alone?
We all saw the public moves Elon did upon approaching Twitter on this subject. Or have you already forgotten his major announcements just 3 months ago and the drama about being a "Free Speech Absolutionist" or whatever he was calling himself?
Twitter wasn't looking for a buyout. Period. Elon went to them. That's obviously what happened here.
I have no dog in this race, it's between Musk and Twitter.
Both sides have their arguments, I couldn't care less which side "wins".
The only thing I wanted to point out is that the best case is clearly Musk walking away without paying $1B. That's why this is going to court, a B represents a lot of zeroes for lawyers to at least get a taste of fighting over.
I don't care either way. I don't like Twitter and I certainly don't like Musk either.
But given what I know about the subject, there's an "obvious" element of justice, who is right or wrong in this situation. Given everything Musk has said, and comparing it against what Twitter has said, I'm inclined to believe Twitter's argument over Musk's so far.
Maybe Musk is holding back his best arguments for court, which is a possible strategy. But everything he's revealed thus far is... pretty bad? Like, poop-emoji bad.
I presume that's what this discussion is about after all? Evaluating the arguments the two sides have brought forth so far? Why else would we be talking about this subject? I mean, both sides are pretty much tweeting their arguments into the public sphere. We certainly have enough to discuss on the subject already (IE: Whether there's elements to disbelieve in Twitter's statements so far, or vice versa for Musk's statements).
Well, Proverbs says (paraphrasing) "When one party speaks, it sounds convincing, but when the other party examines them, then it doesn't sound so convincing."
That is, the evidence we have in support is Twitter's filing. Taking that as authoritative, or even unbiased, is a mistake.
And, it's not going to matter who approached who. What's going to matter is the words of the signed agreement. Everything else is irrelevant.
Mind you, you're not necessarily wrong. But... back in the day, I spent a lot of time following SCO v. IBM. Public announcements of a deal don't always give a good idea of what the deal actually looks like.
> That is, the evidence we have in support is Twitter’s filing.
That’s not entirely true. The evidence referenced in Twitter’s filing is largely the already public merger agreement and independently verifiable public statements by Musk.
> Public announcements of a deal don’t always give a good idea of what the deal actually looks like.
On the other hand, the text of the merger agreement filed with the SEC for the acquisition of a public company better give a good idea of what the deal actually looks like; there are, after all, laws about that.
My question is "Settle how?" Pay a penalty and still not own Twitter? That seems like an unlikely outcome to me. Why would he do that? Why would he not simply complete the transaction instead?