Pending trial, Twitter shareholders approve Musk's $44 billion acquisition

Beijing, September 14 (Xinhua) Twitter shareholders approved a $44 billion takeover offer made by billionaire Elon Musk on Tuesday. Now, whether the deal can be completed will be decided by next month's trial.

Preliminary voting results released on Tuesday showed that a majority of Twitter shareholders voted to accept Musk's $54.2-a-share offer. Musk made a takeover offer for Twitter in April, but has been trying to withdraw the deal ever since. Twitter's board of directors and two prominent consulting firms have encouraged investors to approve the deal. The company's shares were virtually unchanged after the vote, closing at $41.74, well below Mr Musk's proposed offer.

Twitter said 98.6% of shareholders voted for the deal. Mr Musk, Twitter's largest shareholder, did not vote at all, according to two people familiar with the matter. When Mr Musk agreed to buy Twitter, he owned more than 7300 million shares in the company, a stake of nearly 10 per cent.

Although the completion of the deal requires investor approval, it is far from certain that it will eventually be completed. Mr Musk said in July that he would cancel the deal on the grounds that Twitter had misled him about the size of the company's user base and the number of robots and spam accounts. Twitter denied the charges and sued Musk in a Delaware court, forcing him to complete the acquisition. Musk then countersued Twitter.

For weeks, Musk and Twitter's lawyers have been wrangling over witnesses, evidence and even court dates. The trial will take place at the Delaware Court of Chancery on October 17. From Twitter's point of view, a shareholder vote to approve the deal is all Musk needs to push the exchange. Mr Musk disagreed and asked the company to disclose more information. Musk recently tried to support his point by quoting a whistleblower. Peiter Zatko, the former head of security for Twitter, claimed that the company had violated a number of regulatory requirements, lax security measures and provided misleading information about the number of robots on its service.