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Elon Musk is closing in on finally acquiring Twitter as he just got past a major procedural obstacle.
The purchase, on Friday, passed the regulatory waiting period to complete the purchase required by the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements (HSR) Act which expired on Friday, Reuters reported.
With the expiration, completion of the deal is now subject to remaining customary closing conditions, including approval by Twitter stockholders and any other regulatory approvals, Twitter said.
Under antitrust law, deals are reported to the U.S. government for review by either the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission. If either agency had filed a “second request” for documents, the deal would have faced an investigation that could have lasted months.
Twitter also announced the development in a press release.
“Twitter, Inc. today announced the expiration of the waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, as amended (the “HSR Act”), with respect to the previously announced agreement for Twitter to be acquired by affiliates of Elon Musk for $54.20 per share in cash,” the company said.
“The expiration of the HSR waiting period occurred at 11:59 p.m. EDT on June 2, 2022, which was a condition to the closing of the pending transaction. Completion of the transaction is subject to the satisfaction of the remaining customary closing conditions, including approval by Twitter stockholders and the receipt of remaining applicable regulatory approvals,” it said.
It was last month when Musk said that the deal was “on hold.”
“Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users,” he said.
Twitter deal temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of usershttps://t.co/Y2t0QMuuyn
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
Hours later he said, “Still committed to acquisition.”
Still committed to acquisition
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
“Twitter Inc estimated in a filing on Monday that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter,” the Reuters story said.
“The social media company had 229 million users who were served advertising in the first quarter,” it said.
“The disclosure came days after Tesla Inc Chief Executive Elon Musk, who has inked a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion, tweeted that one of his priorities would be to remove “’spam bots’ from the platform,” it said.
The news comes after it was reported this week that Twitter Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal is freezing hiring and taking other cost-cutting measures now that Elon Musk’s bid to purchase the company has been accepted.
The company will not make any new hires and could possibly rescind offers it has already made a company memo said, Bloomberg News reported.
Some exceptions will be made for business-critical roles, as determined by Twitter leadership. The company is also pulling back on costs such as travel, consulting, and marketing, according to the memo.
Agrawal said global events, including the war in Ukraine and the supply chain crunch, have hurt Twitter’s business results and may continue to do so. The company isn’t planning company-wide job cuts, “but leaders will continue making changes to their organizations to improve efficiencies as needed,” Agrawal wrote.
“At the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the decision was made to invest aggressively to deliver big growth in audience and revenue, and as a company, we did not hit intermediate milestones that enable confidence in these goals,” the CEO said. “In order to responsibly manage the organization as we sharpen our roadmaps and our work, we need to continue to be intentional about our teams, hiring, and costs.”
And two of the company’s top executives, head of consumer product Kayvon Beykpour, and Bruce Falck, in charge of revenue, are both exiting the company.
“The truth is that this isn’t how and when I imagined leaving Twitter, and this wasn’t my decision. Parag asked me to leave after letting me know that he wants to take the team in a different direction,” Beykpour said on Twitter.
