An SEC filing from Twitter’s legal team said the social media company have “breached none of its obligations” and that Elon Musk is the one who “knowingly, intentionally, wilfully, and materially breached the agreement”.

Following a tumultuous attempt to purchase Twitter for $44bn in April of this year, the Tesla boss announced on Friday (8 July) that he plans to terminate the deal.

Musk initially said in May that he was putting the deal “temporarily on hold” until he could see calculations that confirm Twitter’s claim that spam and fake accounts represent less than 5pc of users on the site.

Now, in an attempt to back out of the deal completely, Musk has claimed that Twitter ignored his requests for this information, rejected them for reasons that “appear to be unjustified” and gave “incomplete or unusable” information.

However, Twitter board chair Bret Taylor was quick to announce plans to sue Musk to enforce the merger agreement, tweeting on Friday that the board is “committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr Musk”.

“We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery,” he added.

Following this, the company assembled a legal team, which submitted an SEC filing stating that “the agreement is not terminated”.

While there’s also a $1bn ‘breakup fee’ included in the merger agreement that one side could owe the other if they terminate the deal, the filing indicates that Twitter plans to ensure the deal goes ahead rather than pursue the $1bn fee.

So far, Musk appears to have responded to Twitter’s legal action with a series of mocking tweets.

Twitter’s share price fell to $32.64 as trading closed on Monday (11 July), nearly 40pc below Musk’s initial deal price. According to Barron’s, analysts say this could fall even further.

This could mean that both sides could reach a settlement in which Musk makes the acquisition at a lower price.

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