Elon Musk sued by Twitter investors for delaying disclosure of stake

Elon Musk was sued by Twitter investors for delaying the disclosure of his stake in the company, as the Tesla owner mounts a $44bn takeover bid for the social media platform.

The investors said Musk saved himself $156m by failing to disclose that he had purchased more than 5% of Twitter by 14 March.

Musk continued to buy stock after that, and ultimately disclosed in early April that he owned 9.2% of the company, according to the lawsuit, filed on Wednesday in San Francisco federal court.

Neither Musk nor his lawyer immediately responded to requests for comment. Twitter declined to comment.

Musk on Wednesday pledged an additional $6.25bn in equity financing to fund his bid for Twitter, a sign he is working to complete the deal even though he last week conditioned its progress on Twitter presenting proof that spam bots accounted for less than 5% of its users.