Elon Musk Twitter Deal Clears Antitrust Waiting Period, Shareholder Vote Next

Twitter said on Friday that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s $44 billion USD offer for Twitter has cleared the federal waiting period for objections from antitrust regulators — reports The Wall Street Journal.

The social media giant said that the 30-day waiting period for the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to evaluate a proposed transaction and object to potential antitrust violations ended on Thursday.

However, regulators haven’t really been holding up the deal, to begin with. Musk himself said last month that the acquisition was “temporarily on hold” after he discovered that Twitter may have significantly more fake/spam accounts than indicated in the company’s public reports.

Musk assured that he was “still committed” to buying Twitter, but he later said that the deal “cannot move forward” until the social media company’s CEO offers up evidence supporting its fake/spam account numbers.

Many theorized that Musk’s highly-public concerns over Twitter’s bot account numbers could be a negotiation tactic to drive down the price of the acquisition or probable cause to pull out from the deal altogether as economic markets and business sectors the world over take a downturn.

Musk has offered to purchase Twitter for $54.20 per share, which experts have argued may be too high a price.

Twitter has said it is moving forward with the deal. The company’s shareholders are yet to vote on Musk’s proposed buyout offer.

Musk doesn’t appear to be backing out either. In fact, the celebrity billionaire has committed even more of his own wealth — a whopping $33.5 billion — to the bid as he continues to look for additional funding from co-investors.

Last month, Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives said the Musk-Twitter deal has less than a 50% chance of closing.