Elon Musk says Twitter deal ‘temporarily on hold’ | St. Louis business news
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LONDON (AP) — Elon Musk said Friday that his planned $44 billion purchase of Twitter is “temporarily on hold” pending details on spam and fake accounts on the social media platform.
The announcement that the Tesla billionaire tweeted is another twist amid signs of internal turmoil over his planned buyout of Twitter, including that the social media company fired two of its top managers Thursday.
It wasn’t clear whether the fake account issue could scuttle the Twitter deal. Stock in both Twitter and Tesla swung sharply in opposite directions, with Twitter’s stock tumbling 18% and Tesla, which Musk had proposed using to help fund the Twitter deal, jumped 5%.
Investors have had to weigh legal troubles for Musk, as well as the possibility that acquiring Twitter could be a distraction from running the world’s most valuable automaker.
Twitter said Thursday that the company is pausing most hiring and except for business critical roles. In addition, it said in a statement, “we are pulling back on non-labor costs to ensure we are being responsible and efficient.”
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In a memo sent to employees and confirmed by Twitter, CEO Parag Agrawal said the company has not hit growth and revenue milestones after the company began to invest “aggressively” to expand its user base and revenue.
Photos: Elon Musk through the years
FILE – In this Oct. 20, 2000 file photo, PayPal Chief Executive Officer Peter Thiel, left, and founder Elon Musk, right, pose with the PayPal logo at corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)
FILE – In this Dec. 9, 2008 file photo, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk stands in front a Tesla sports car at a Tesla showroom in Menlo Park, Calif. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, file)
FILE – In this March 26, 2009 file photo, Tesla Motors CEO, Chairman and Product Architect Elon Musk speaks at the unveiling of the Tesla Model S all-electric 5-door sedan, in Hawthorne, Calif., Thursday, March 26, 2009. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
In this July 21, 2009 photo, shows Tesla CEO Elon Musk talking about the lawsuit at Tesla headquarters in San Carlos, Calif., Tuesday, July 21, 2009. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
In this Tuesday, July 21, 2009 photo, Tesla CEO Elon Musk poses at Tesla headquarters in San Carlos, Calif. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
President Barack Obama walks to look at the Flacon 9 launch vehicle with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at Kennedy Space Center Thursday, April 15, 2010.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
Calif. Gov., Arnold Schwarzenegger, right, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, left, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, center, at Tesla headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., Thursday, May 20, 2010. Tesla and Toyota officials announce partnership. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, poses with a Tesla car in front of Nasdaq following the electric automaker’s initial public offering, Tuesday, June, 29, 2010, in New York. The company plans to trade on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker “TSLA.” (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Elon Musk, center, CEO of Tesla Motors, raises his hand at the Nasdaq opening bell to celebrate the electric automaker’s initial public offering, Tuesday, June, 29, 2010 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)
Elon Musk, co-founder, chief executive and product architect of Tesla Motors, poses at the premiere of the documentary film “Revenge of the Electric Car,” Friday, Oct. 21, 2011, at Tesla Motors in Los Angeles. The film is director Chris Paine’s follow-up to his 2006 documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
SpaceX CEO and Chief Designer Elon Musk walks in a procession after delivering the commencement speech for Caltech graduates in Pasadena, Calif. Friday, June 15, 2012. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
SpaceX CEO Elon Musk gives the opening keynote at the SXSW Interactive Festival on Saturday, March 9, 2013 in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Jack Plunkett)
FILE – In this May 29, 2014 file photo, Elon Musk, CEO and CTO of SpaceX, introduces the SpaceX Dragon V2 spaceship at the SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, Calif. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors Inc., introduces the Model X car at the company’s headquarters Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2015, in Fremont, Calif. Musk said the Model X sets a new bar for automotive engineering, with unique features like rear falcon-wing doors, which open upward, and a driver’s door that opens on approach and closes itself when the driver is inside. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)
Elon Musk, CEO & Chief Product Architect of Tesla Moters, attends the premiere of “Racing Extinction” during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, Jan. 24, 2015, in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Arthur Mola/Invision/AP)
SpaceX founder Elon Musk speaks during the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico, Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2016. In a receptive audience full of space buffs, Musk said he envisions 1,000 passenger ships flying en masse to Mars, ‘Battlestar Galactica’ style. He calls it the Mars Colonial fleet, and he says it could become reality within a century. Musk’s goal is to establish a full-fledged city on Mars and thereby make humans a multi-planetary species. (AP Photo/Refugio Ruiz)
President Donald Trump talks with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, center, and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon during a meeting with business leaders in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, Feb. 3, 2017. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Grimes, left, and Elon Musk attend The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination exhibition on Monday, May 7, 2018, in New York. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk speaks after announcing Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa as the first private passenger on a trip around the moon, Monday, Sept. 17, 2018, in Hawthorne, Calif. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Elon Musk, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., speaks during an unveiling event for the Boring Co. Hawthorne test tunnel in Hawthorne, Calif., on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2018. Musk has unveiled his underground transportation tunnel, allowing invited guests to take some of the first rides ever on the tech entrepreneur’s solution to “soul-destroying traffic.” (Robyn Beck/Pool Photo via AP)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk jokingly motions to kick before introducing the Model Y at Tesla’s design studio Thursday, March 14, 2019, in Hawthorne, Calif. The Model Y may be Tesla’s most important product yet as it attempts to expand into the mainstream and generate enough cash to repay massive debts that threaten to topple the Palo Alto, Calif., company. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, left, talks with SpaceX chief engineer Elon Musk, second from left, and NASA astronauts crew Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken, right, in front of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, about the progress to fly astronauts to and from the International Space Station, from American soil, as part of the agency’s commercial crew program at SpaceX headquarters, in Hawthorne, Calif., Thursday, Oct. 10, 2019. (AP Photo/Alex Gallardo)
Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduces the Cybertruck at Tesla’s design studio Thursday, Nov. 21, 2019, in Hawthorne, Calif. Musk is taking on the workhorse heavy pickup truck market with his latest electric vehicle. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)
Elon Musk, founder, CEO, and chief engineer/designer of SpaceX speaks during a news conference after a Falcon 9 SpaceX rocket test flight to demonstrate the capsule’s emergency escape system at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Sunday, Jan. 19, 2020. (AP Photo/John Raoux)
Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk speaks during a round table discussion with President Donald Trump at Kennedy Space Center, Wednesday, May 27, 2020, in Cape Canaveral, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Tesla and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk jumps in the air as people applaud during an event at the Vehicle Assembly Building on Saturday, May 23, 2020, at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. The event occurred after a rocket ship designed and built by SpaceX lifted off on Saturday with two Americans on a history-making flight to the International Space Station. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine looks on at left. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
SpaceX owner and Tesla CEO Elon Musk arrives on the red carpet for the Axel Springer media award, in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2020. (Hannibal Hanschke/Pool via AP)
Elon Musk walks from the justice center in Wilmington, Del., Monday, July 12, 2021. Musk took to a witness stand Monday to defend his company’s 2016 acquisition of a troubled company called SolarCity against a shareholder lawsuit that claims he’s to blame for a deal that was rife with conflicts of interest and never delivered the profits he had promised. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, attends the opening of the Tesla factory Berlin Brandenburg in Gruenheide, Germany, Tuesday, March 22, 2022. The first European factory in Gruenheide, designed for 500,000 vehicles per year, is an important pillar of Tesla’s future strategy. (Patrick Pleul/Pool via AP)
FILE – Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends the opening of the Tesla factory Berlin Brandenburg in Gruenheide, Germany, Tuesday, March 22, 2022.