(Paris) The chairman of the board of directors of Twitter, Bret Taylor, confirmed on Wednesday that the social network still hoped that the takeover bid for Elon Musk would succeed as the boss of Tesla cast doubt on his project.
Posted at 9:51 a.m.
“We intend to close the transaction,” said Mr. Taylor, who was speaking at VivaTech in Paris.
The chairman of the social network’s board, who is also co-chief executive of IT group Salesforce, declined to comment further on Mr Musk’s proposal.
When he made his takeover offer in April, the South African-born billionaire sent a letter to Mr. Taylor in which Mr. Musk expressed his belief that “the business will not prosper or serve its societal imperative in its present form.
He had offered to acquire Twitter for $54.20 per share, or about $44 billion.
But the boss of Tesla has since covered his tracks, suggesting that he could withdraw from the transaction if he did not obtain reliable figures on the number of fake accounts and spam on the social network.
Some analysts believe that this strategy aims to put pressure on the management of Twitter to lower the price of the takeover or while it is a pretext to withdraw from the transaction.
Mr. Musk is due to meet Twitter employees for the first time since his bid on Thursday for a question-and-answer session.