By Andrew Mills, Yousef Saba and Hyunjoo Jin
DOHA (Reuters) – Elon Musk said there are still a few unresolved matters with his Twitter deal including the number of spam users on the system and the coming together of the debt portion of the deal.
Musk, the world’s richest person according to Forbes magazine, agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion.
“We’re still awaiting resolution on that matter, and that is a very significant matter,” he said, reiterating doubts over Twitter’s claims that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5% of its monetisable daily active users.
“And then of course, there’s the question of, will the, the debt portion of the round come together? And then will the shareholders vote in favour?”
Musk, who spoke at the Qatar Economic Forum organised by Bloomberg, said regarding the economy: “As to whether there is a recession in the near term. I think that is more likely than not.” “It’s not a certainty, but it appears more likely than not.”
He said over the next three months, Tesla expects to see a 10% reduction in salaried workforce, leading to about a 3.5% reduction in total headcount, changes he described as “not super material”.
Musk told Tesla executives in an email on June 2 seen by Reuters he had a “super bad feeling” about the economy and that the company needed to cut staff by about 10% and “pause all hiring worldwide.”
He said Tesla expects to increase hourly workers, but news website Eletrek earlier reported that Tesla was also laying off hourly workers.
(Additional reporting by Nadine Awadalla in Dubai and Hyunjoo Jin in San Francisco; editing by Jason Neely)
