San Francisco: Twitter’s shareholders have voted to approve a deal with Elon Musk to buy the company for $44 billion.
The decision was made in a short conference call with investors from the company’s San Francisco headquarters, the BBC reported.
It means Twitter will now try to force Musk to buy the company in the courts, the BBC said.
The meeting followed explosive testimony from Twitter’s former head of security Peiter Zatko in front of the US Senate.
In April, Twitter agreed to sell the company to the world’s richest person, Elon Musk.
However, the deal soured after Musk alleged he was misled by Twitter about the number of spam and bot accounts on the platform.
In May, he said he no longer wished to purchase the company, but Twitter argued that Musk cannot backtrack on the deal.
The social media platform said that fewer than 5 per cent of its monetizable daily active users (those who are able to look at adverts) are bots. Musk argued it could be many times higher.
Twitter is currently valued at $32 billion, considerably below the $44 billion offer from the Tesla owner.
Tuesday’s vote could have spelled the end of Twitter’s legal pursuit, but shareholders have now given the company the green light to pursue Musk in court, the BBC reported.
The two are set to meet in front of a Delaware state court in October. During the hearing a judge will decide whether or not Musk has to buy the company.
Just before the shareholder decision, Twitter whistle-blower Pieter Zatko was in Washington testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee about alleged security flaws, the BBC reported.
He told US lawmakers the firm was “misleading the public” about how secure the platform is.
The firm’s former head of security went on to say that Twitter was “a decade behind” security standards. Twitter said Zatko was fired from his job, and his claims are inaccurate.
Zatko previously supported Elon Musk’s claim that the platform has more spam and fake accounts than it has admitted – though he didn’t elaborate on this on Tuesday.
Last week, a judge said Musk’s lawyers would be allowed to use the Twitter whistle-blower’s testimony in court.
