Elon Musk is buying Twitter after all! The long, winding road that got him there

The $44-billion Twitter-Elon Musk deal has had many twists and turns over the past six months, with the world’s richest man finally agreeing to close the deal at his original offer price of $54.20 a share, days ahead of an impending trial later in October. 

Here's a recap of the important events:

April 4: A regulatory filing revealed that Tesla boss Elon Musk had picked up a 9.2 per cent stake in Twitter worth $3 billion, making one of the most prolific users of the micro-blogging site its largest shareholder.   

April 14: Musk offers to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share or a total of about $44 billion, saying that the company needs to be taken private to address free speech issues surrounding it. “My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” he said in a letter to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor, according to a regulatory disclosure. 

April 21: Elon Musk lines up a $46.5 billion package to fund his unsolicited bid to buy Twitter. It’s a combination of debt and equity financing, according to securities filings.

April 25: After trying to fend off the offer through a poison pill strategy, Twitter accepts the world’s richest person’s offer to buy and take it public. The $44-billion buyout would have been one of the biggest-ever acquisitions of a tech company. “Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a statement announcing the deal. 

May 13: Musk posts a surprise tweet that the deal was "temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5 per cent of users”. He quickly follows it up with another tweet: Still committed to acquisition. 

May 16: In a series of tweets, the platform’s India-born CEO Parag Agrawal explained how the company could tackle spam accounts and bots. Musk responds with a poop emoji, making his fight with the CEO public. 

May 17: Keeping the guessing game on, Musk tweets that “this deal cannot move forward” until he gets more clarity from the platform about the extent of its problem of spam and fake accounts. Twitter responds by saying it is “committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practicable.”

July 8: Musk’s lawyers inform the SEC in a filing that the billionaire was terminating the deal as the platform failed to respond to his concerns around spam and fake accounts.  

July 12: Twitter sues Elon Musk, setting up a fight in a Delaware court to force him back into the deal. "Having mounted a public spectacle to put Twitter in play, and having proposed and then signed a seller-friendly merger agreement, [Mr] Musk apparently believes that he - unlike every other party subject to Delaware contract law - is free to change his mind, trash the company, disrupt its operations, destroy stockholder value, and walk away," said the lawsuit.

July 19: A Delaware judge agrees to Twitter’s request to fast-track the trial, scheduling it for five days in October.

August 10: Elon Musk sells $7 billion of Tesla stock, according to regulatory filings. He later tweets the move is to raise funds in case he is forced to complete his $44-billion Twitter deal.

October 4: Twitter confirms that Musk has agreed to buy Twitter for his original offer of $54.20 a share, days ahead of the impending trial in a Delaware court.

Also read: Elon Musk reverses course, again: He's ready to buy Twitter, build 'X' app

Also read: Apollo, Sixth Street no longer in talks to finance Twitter deal