Just days ago, Elon Musk made a move that likely did not come as a shock to anyone: he filed to back out of his Twitter acquisition deal.
While his attempt to cancel the deal is expected to rev up legal drama between the social media platform and the billionaire, Twitter employees are feeling defeated.
After Musk revealed his intentions to walk away from the purchase, Twitter’s shares fell 6%, further hurting the company’s reputation in the eyes of investors or other potential acquirers. As a result, the company’s unstable stock prices could have a direct impact on employee compensation.
“This has been the direction of travel for a while,” said one anonymous employee. “There’s been a general lack of belief that the deal would go through as signed.”
Now, some analysts are projecting that the firm’s stock could fall over 30% from its Friday closing.
Twitter has since threatened to take legal action to hold Musk accountable for the $44 billion commitment he made last April. The firm’s board said that it is confident in its standing in court, but employees are already feeling the pressure of an inevitably volatile future at the social media company.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 11, 2022
Last May, Musk announced that the deal was temporarily on hold due to his desire to further inquire about Twitter’s number of spam bot accounts, which it claims makes up less than 5% of its user base.
Musk’s lawyers have argued that Twitter has failed to provide data that proves this, while the firm says it has kept up with all of the terms of the agreement.
