Musk deal for Twitter dodges lengthy U.S. antitrust review

(Reuters) -Twitter Inc said on Friday that the U.S. antitrust waiting period for Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of the social media giant had expired, indicating it had dodged a lengthy review of the proposed deal.

With the expiration, completion of the deal is now subject to remaining customary closing conditions, including approval by Twitter stockholders and any other regulatory approvals, Twitter said.

Under antitrust law, deals are reported to the U.S. government for review by either the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission. If either agency had filed a “second request” for documents, the deal would have faced an investigation that could have lasted months.

However, last month Tesla Inc Chief Executive Musk said the Twitter deal was “temporarily on hold”, while he sought more information about the proportion of fake accounts on the platform.

Musk has secured equity and debt funding for the deal.

In late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange, Twitter was up about a half a percent at $40.10 a share.

(Reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru and Diane Bartz in Washington; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Jonathan Oatis)