Elon Musk tried to negotiate a 30 per cent discount on his $44bn deal to buy Twitter before finally agreeing to go through with the purchase, according to a report.
The Tesla CEO spent months trying to back out of the deal for the social media platform, before renewing his bid for the social media platform earlier this week.
Mr Musk had claimed that the company had not been open with him about the number of bots and spam accounts on Twitter.
But with a two-day deposition pending ahead of a trial in Delaware starting on 17 October, the billionaire sent a letter to the Twitter board announcing he intended to complete the deal.
But in the weeks before that Mr Musk attempted to get Twitter to agree to a proposal that would have valued the company at around $31bn, three people with knowledge of events told The New York Times.
Twitter rejected the proposal the sources told the newspaper, but discussions had focussed on a discount of around 10 per cent that would have seen Mr Musk pay $39.6bn.
Mr Musk agreed to buy the company for $54.20 a share in April, but by July had indicated that he had changed his mind, citing the spam issues.
Twitter then sued him to force the deal to go through.
In his letter to Twitter on Monday, Mr Musk agreed to pay the full price but said that was contingent on securing the necessary funding to pay it.
If he cannot secure that from banks he faces paying the company a reported $1bn break-up fee.
“The intention of the company is to close the transaction at $54.20 per share,” Twitter said in a statement after receiving the letter.
Mr Musk and Twitter have reportedly been in talks since then to complete the deal, but a judge in their lawsuit has said neither party has requested the case be halted and it is still set to go ahead.
