The website Investing.com reports that Elon Musk said on Friday that his $44 billion deal to take Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) private is “temporarily on hold” while the two sides argue about how many fake and spam accounts are on the social media network.
Twitter said in a filing on Thursday that these kinds of accounts make up less than 5% of all the accounts that use the network. Musk has said that he thinks it’s higher and that getting them off the network would be one of his top priorities if his deal goes through.
The price of Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) shares, which Musk planned to use as collateral for a $12 billion margin loan from Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) to pay for the deal, has plummeted this week, making the transaction less likely. Bloomberg said on Thursday that Musk was considering asking the company for $6 billion in preferred stock instead, which would cut the amount he would have to borrow to make the deal happen.
