© Reuters Despite Buying Twitter, Judge Says Musk’s SEC Agreement Stays in Place
Whether Tesla (NASDAQ:) CEO, Elon Musk, owns the site or not, a federal judge on Wednesday denied Musk’s request to end a 2018 agreement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that required his Tesla-related tweets to be reviewed and preapproved.
“Musk cannot now seek to retract the agreement he knowingly and willingly entered by simply bemoaning that he felt like he had to agree to it at the time but now – once the specter of the litigation is a distant memory and his company has become, in his estimation, all but invincible – wishes he had not,” the judge wrote.
This is the second request in as many months that has been denied. Last month, Musk asked the courts to end the SEC oversight, claiming it infringed on his First Amendment rights. The request was denied then too.
This latest decision follows Musk’s $44 billion bid for Twitter Inc . (NYSE:), which the social-media company’s board accepted on Monday.
U.S. District Judge Lewis Liman in Manhattan sided with the SEC Wednesday, saying in a written opinion that Musk’s contention that the regulators have used the consent decree to harass him and to launch investigations of his speech is “meritless, and, in this case, particularly ironic.”
Twitter has traded down to $49.60/share, below Musk’s $54.20 offer price, suggesting the market sees a risk that the deal might fall apart.
By Michael Elkins
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