NYSE halts trading on Twitter after Elon Musk announces plans for acquisition

According to reports, Tesla’s Elon Musk now plans to buy Twitter Inc. for the initial asking price of $54.20 per share. Twitter shares jumped on the news and climbed nearly 20%, while trading has been halted twice so far.

A report claims that Tesla’s Elon Musk will buy Twitter at its original asking price.

It appears that Elon Musk intends to go through with his plan to acquire Twitter after he wanted to abandon the deal due to a lack of information regarding automated accounts known as bots. The news follows the recent shareholder vote that saw Elon Musk being chosen by a majority of shareholders. Bloomberg was the first to report the news on Tuesday, October 4, 2022, and after the Bloomberg article was published, Twitter’s shares jumped, causing trading to halt on the New York Stock Exchange’s stock markets.

Today, Twitter stock is up 12.67% and is priced at about $47.93 per TWTR share. The Bloomberg article, written by Jef Feely and Ed Hammond quotes people with knowledge of the deal and it says that Musk wrote a letter to Twitter. According to CNBC, the newsdesk has “Independently confirmed Musk’s new offer“. This latest agreement also follows the comment between former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and the Tesla executive.

The exchanges between Dorsey and Musk explain why Dorsey decided to leave Twitter, as he stressed that the platform should never have become a company. “A new platform is needed. It can’t be a company. That’s why I left“, Dorsey wrote. The Twitter founder added that the platform should be “an open source protocol, funded by some sort of foundation that doesn’t own the protocol, but advances it.“

In addition, Elon Musk has been fighting with Twitter over the lack of information about the number of automated accounts on the social media platform. He explained that he was going to back out of the deal and outlined some of the reasons why he wanted to end the purchase. Prior to the recent letter to Twitter, in which Musk states that he will see the purchase through to the end, both parties (Musk and Twitter) were planning to meet in court on October 17 regarding the disagreements and termination.