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by Domenic_S 1327 days ago
People try and get out of deals all the time. It's a normal part of business.

Edit: I take it many of you haven't been a part of a company that gets an offer that falls apart later, tried to buy/sell property, etc etc. Deals fall apart constantly, trying to get out of a deal isn't indicative of anything meaningful in and of itself. The only really unusual thing that happened in the Twitter deal was Twitter forcing the consummation.

1 comments

He waived his ability to do due diligence which is part of the normal business process that allows for backing out of a deal, because he was so confident in buying Twitter. Then he almost immediately tried backing out by claiming that things that would have been found out during the due diligence phase were a surprise to him(bots).

It was forced because he left himself open to the deal being forced which was the idiotic mistake

I think we can take it that you haven’t been part of many businesses that actually had to compete and operate with other businesses with equal leverage. The way a business negotiates when it’s getting bought out due to failing investor goals is a lot different than when the two opposing parties have equivalent leverage

He did not claim that bots were a surprise -- in fact, getting rid of bots was the premise of his offer in the first place. His issue with the bots was that he thought there was evidence that there were far more bots than claimed and Twitter was dodging his requests for info. There are some plausible arguments that even outside due diligence that bot problem would be meaningful, like that it's a materially adverse change.

But that's all beside the point. These kind of antics happen all the time in the business world. The buyer threatens to back out, the seller takes them to court, they settle. LVMH & Tiffany comes to mind as a very recent example: it wasn't a due diligence argument there, either.