People seem to be looking at this as if there are two active actors in this situation. There really isn't. There's Musk, doing what Musk wants, and Twitter reacting. Twitter didn't want to sell to Musk, but there in this situation that they have to deal with it. If Musk truly wanted to walk away, I think Twitter would find a way to let him. But the fear is that he's just going to renege on the price and then say "34.20 a share" because that's probably a decent price for twitter now.
So now they just have to play full defense. Musk says he'll walk because they won't provide data? They'll provide data. Musk says the numbers are false? Let him prove it. At the end of the day it's a signed contract.
The question is how quickly does this come down to "Okay let's cut a deal" - and my feeling is that since this entire thing has been an ego trip for Musk there is no deal that's acceptable for him to walk away without some sort of: Musk pays $XB and Twitter admits the bot problem is bigger than stated in some sort of way that doesn't cause legal troubles for Twitter. It has to be a "I didn't want Twitter anyway" narrative, rather than "Musk just stuck his dick into a meat grinder" type narrative.
I'm sure they'd extract some price, but if the conversation were "this deal won't happen" they'd be a lot more flexible than what's actually going on which is "This douchebag will be back in 3 months at half the price"
Except Twitter doesn't need to be flexible in either case. Experts seem to agree the contract and law is on Twitters side. Musk signed and now owes the shareholders ~$44B.
The stuff about bots and whatever else is a distraction.
So now they just have to play full defense. Musk says he'll walk because they won't provide data? They'll provide data. Musk says the numbers are false? Let him prove it. At the end of the day it's a signed contract.
The question is how quickly does this come down to "Okay let's cut a deal" - and my feeling is that since this entire thing has been an ego trip for Musk there is no deal that's acceptable for him to walk away without some sort of: Musk pays $XB and Twitter admits the bot problem is bigger than stated in some sort of way that doesn't cause legal troubles for Twitter. It has to be a "I didn't want Twitter anyway" narrative, rather than "Musk just stuck his dick into a meat grinder" type narrative.