Musk plans to go ahead with original price of $54.20 a share for Twitter

NEW YORK: Billionaire Elon Musk is proposing to go ahead with his original offer of $54.20 per share to take Twitter Inc private, two sources familiar with the matter said on Tuesday, sending shares of the social media firm surging.

The agreement puts the world’s richest person in charge of one of the most influential media platforms and ends months of turbulent litigation that damaged Twitter’s brand and fed Musk’s reputation for erratic behavior. Musk, the chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Inc , will take over a company he originally committed to buying in April, but soon soured on.

Twitter shares jumped 12.7% to $47.93 before trading was halted for the second time, while Tesla shares rose by 1.5%.

Bloomberg reported the move earlier, saying Musk made the proposal in a letter to Twitter. It cited people who asked not to be identified discussing confidential information.

Twitter and Musk’s lawyers were not immediately available for requests for comment from Reuters. The news comes ahead of a highly anticipated face-off between Musk and Twitter in Delaware’s Court of Chancery on Oct. 17, in which the social media company was set to seek an order directing Musk to close the deal at $54.20 per share.

Musk agreed in April to buy Twitter for $44 billion, but within weeks said the number of bot accounts was much higher than Twitter’s estimate of less than 5% of users. Musk, one of Twitter’s most prominent users, claimed in July he could walk away from the deal because Twitter misled him about the number of real users and the security of user data. “This is a clear sign that Musk recognized heading into Delaware Court that the chances of winning vs. Twitter board was highly unlikely and this $44 billion deal was going to be completed one way or another,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note after the news.