Elon Musk: Twitter takeover ‘temporarily on hold’

Elon Musk has insisted that he is ‘still committed’ to his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter after throwing the deal into chaos by tweeting that it was ‘temporarily on hold’.

Musk’s surprise tweets early Friday sent Twitter stock plunging in the pre-market, as analysts speculated that Musk is trying to negotiate a lower price for the deal or pull out completely.

Citing a week-old regulatory filing from Twitter, Musk claimed that he wanted to pause the deal to verify that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5 per cent of the company’s 229 million users during the first quarter.