Twitter shareholders aren't happy about the ongoing antics involving Tesla CEO Elon Musk's proposed $44 billion acquisition of the social networking company.
CNBC reports that a group of shareholders have filed suit against Musk and Twitter over allegations that both entities have violated California laws since Musk's stake in Twitter was revealed in early April. The group reportedly has three primary complaints about this conduct.
The first complaint is that Musk kept his stake in Twitter—and his plans to join the company's board—a secret to financially benefit from these hush-hush dealings. Twitter's stock price has tumbled from $49.97 on April 4, the day before Musk's stake was disclosed, to $40.31 today.
The second complaint is that Musk had access to "insider information about the company based on private conversations with board members and executives," as CNBC puts it, including Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and contentious Twitter board member Egon Durban.
The third complaint involves Musk's flip-flopping on completing his acquisition of Twitter. Musk said the deal "cannot move forward" earlier this month because he wanted more information about what percentage of Twitter accounts are managed by bots rather than actual people.
Yahoo reported on May 2 that more than half of Musk's followers could be bots.
The complaint says: “Musk proceeded to make statements, send tweets, and engage in conduct designed to create doubt about the deal and drive Twitter’s stock down substantially in order to create leverage that Musk hoped to use to either back out of the purchase or to re-negotiate the buyout price by as much as 25% which, if accomplished, would result in an $11 billion reduction in the Buyout consideration."
Twitter has said that it will move forward with the acquisition despite Musk's complaints about the number of fake accounts on the platform. CNBC reports that the shareholders in this lawsuit, which was filed in a California Northern District Court, are seeking a jury trial.
Twitter didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.