Twitter sues Elon Musk to force him to to complete $44bn takeover

Twitter has sued Elon Musk in an attempt to force him to complete his $44bn (£37bn) takeover accusing him of "bad faith" after the world's richest man tried to pull out of the deal.

On Friday Mr Musk said he wanted to pull out of the deal after Twitter failed to give him enough information on the number of spam and bot accounts on its platform.

Mr Musk announced the takeover deal in April but a month later put it on hold due to the issue of fake accounts.

However, he signed the deal and it is not clear if he can pull out at this stage.

Even if he does the merger agreement has a $1bn break up fee.

Twitter is now suing Mr Musk to force him to complete his deal.

Twitter’s lawsuit opens with a sharply-worded accusation: "Musk refuses to honour his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.

“Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, Musk apparently believes that he - unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law - is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away."

“Oh the irony lol,” Mr Musk tweeted after Twitter filed the lawsuit, without explanation.Twitter’s suit repeatedly emphasises Musk’s contemplation of starting a Twitter competitor - an alternative option he sometimes aired publicly and sometimes privately to Twitter’s executives and board members.

While the company has said it cooperated in providing the data he requested on fake “spam bot” accounts, the lawsuit suggests Twitter was concerned that disclosing too much “highly sensitive information” could expose the company to competitive harm if shared.

When he announced the deal back in April Mr Musk vowed to "unlock" Twitter's potential and make it a free-speech champion.

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Among his biggest promises was to end Donald Trump's ban on the platform.

In the lawsuit, Twitter points to Mr Musk's falling wealth as one of the reasons he could be trying to exit the deal.

Most of Mr Musk's wealth comes from his stocks in Tesla, which has plummeted in recent months losing him billions.

Twitter’s suit calls Mr Musk’s tactics “a model of hypocrisy,” noting that he had emphasised plans to take Twitter private in order to rid it of spam accounts.

But once the market declined "Musk shifted his narrative, suddenly demanding ‘verification’ that spam was not a serious problem on Twitter’s platform, and claiming a burning need to conduct ‘diligence’ he had expressly forsworn.”

Similarly, the company says that Mr Musk operated in bad faith, accusing him of requesting company information in order to accuse Twitter of providing “misrepresentations” about its business to regulators and investors.

Mr Musk “has been acting against this deal since the market started turning, and has breached the merger agreement repeatedly in the process,” the suit said.