However, Galloway said this was not a justification for abandoning the deal.
He said Musk’s commitment to pay $54.20 a share for Twitter occurred in “a month of mania” and that because his “piggy bank” was now 40% smaller following a fall in Tesla shares, he was now using bots as an excuse to walk away.
Musk’s net worth has plummeted by $65 billion since he announced the Twitter takeover in April with Tesla stock losing about a quarter of its value during that time.
“The Twitter folks may think they’re going to prevail in court, but they want to resolve the uncertainty,” Chester Spatt, a professor of finance at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and a former chief economist at the Securities and Exchange Commission, told Insider.
“Or they feel that rather than incurring the costs [of a legal battle] that they maybe concede a little bit to help Musk save face.”
Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, now valued Twitter at $30 per share, meaning the company is worth $23 billion, or $21 billion less than Musk agreed to pay.
