After the canceled takeover: Twitter announces lawsuit against Elon Musk

The short message service wants to enforce the purchase in court. Also: China fines Alibaba and Tencent and layoffs at Argo AI.

Good morning! Even during the weekend, work in the digital scene continued in many places.

The top topics:

After the collapsed takeover deal is preparing Twitter on the legal dispute with Elon Musk. The richest person in the world had declared his $44 billion takeover attempt from Twitter to be over on Friday: Musk’s lawyers wrote in a stock market release that Twitter had misrepresented the number of fake accounts and did not want to release important data, which meant that Musk was no longer able to participate in his contract of sale is bound. Twitter now wants to try in court to force the purchase of the short message service at the negotiated price of $44 billion.

According to an insider, Twitter has hired elite law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to prepare for a lawsuit against Elon Musk. The San Francisco-based company plans to file a lawsuit in the Delaware Court of Chancery earlier this week. If the takeover fails, Musk faces a fine of more than $1 billion. However, it is unclear whether there will be a court dispute. Twitter and Musk could agree to a higher fine out of court or renegotiate the purchase price. [Mehr bei Handelsblatt, Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, CNBC und Financial Times]

On Gründerszene you read today: Canceled flights, chaos at security checks, dramatic scenes at baggage handling: The Aviation industry is in crisis. For mobility expert and author Don Dahlmann, the consequence of this is clear: short and medium-haul flights have to go. Also to promote more sustainable mobility. You can read what it looks like in the new torque column. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

And here are the other headlines of the night and the past few days:

China has against the technology companies Ali Baba and Tencent and a number of other companies have been fined for failing to comply with antitrust transaction disclosure rules. This was announced by the country’s market surveillance authority. The state administration for market regulation published a list of 28 deals that broke the rules. Under the Anti-Monopoly Law, the maximum possible fine is 500,000 yuan (US$74,688) in any case. [Mehr bei Reuters]

Argo AI, an autonomous vehicle startup backed by Ford and Volkswagen, has laid off about 150 employees. The layoffs affect 6 percent of the Pittsburgh-based company’s 2,000-strong team. Ford put $1 billion into the company in 2017 and Volkswagen invested $2.6 billion in 2020. Argo AI is currently testing fully autonomous vehicles in Miami and Austin and plans to partner with Lyft in both cities. The company is also working towards introducing an automated ride-sharing service with Volkswagen in Germany by 2025. [Mehr bei Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal und The Verge]

A major outage of the mobile and internet networks of Rogers Communications caused disruptions to banks, emergency numbers and police across Canada on Friday. Customers flocked to coffee shops and public libraries to access alternative networks. Financial institutions reported problems ranging from ATMs to cashless payment systems. Rogers, which has approximately 10 million mobile customers and 2.25 million retail internet customers, is the leading service provider in Ontario and together with BCE and Telus controls 90 percent of the market share in Canada. [Mehr bei CNBC]

The Cryptocurrency Exchange Blockchain.com could make millions for their loans to the bankrupt crypto hedge funds Three Arrows Capital to lose. “Three Arrows is rapidly becoming insolvent and the impact of the outage amounts to approximately $270 million worth of Blockchain.com cryptocurrencies and US dollar loans,” Blockchain.com chief executive officer Peter Smith said in a statement Letter to Shareholders. Aggressive rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve and recession fears have caused turmoil in stock markets and sparked a sell-off in cryptocurrencies. The crypto winter has hit several companies, including lending platform Celsius Network and Voyager Digital. [Mehr bei Reuters]

Google has offered to split parts of its ad-tech business into a separate company to ward off a second anticipated US Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit. Such a concession would keep the advertising business under the Alphabet umbrella. Although Google is best known for its search engine, its main business is online advertising. It is unclear whether such a division would satisfy the Justice Department. [Mehr bei The Information, Wall Street Journal und CNBC]

Our reading tip on Gründerszene: The savings fintech Rubarb the Scholz nephew is insolvent. Again and again they had used their relatives as advertising. It was of no use. [Mehr bei Gründerszene]

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Have a good start into the week!

Your Gründerszene editors