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More landlords are taking Twitter to court over unpaid rent at the social media company’s San Francisco headquarters and UK offices – the latest legal trouble for billionaire owner Elon Musk, who has been trying to cut costs.
Twitter is facing a lawsuit over alleged failure to pay headquarters rent, according to California court documents. The owner of the venue, in central London, said the company was facing legal action over rent arrears.
Musk made extreme cost cuts after last year’s US$44 billion deal to buy Twitter left the company on the hook for about US$1 billion a year in interest payments. Twitter has been taken to court this month for not hiring another office in San Francisco.
It comes as Musk has testified in recent days in a separate class-action lawsuit from Tesla investors who claimed his 2017 tweets were misleading about the financing for his take on private electric cars.
The Tesla CEO’s cost-cutting strategy for Twitter also includes laying off the company’s workforce and auctioning memorabilia and iconic office furniture.
Missed payment, the statement said
Twitter did not respond to a request for comment. The communications department was shut down after Musk’s acquisition.
The owner of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, located at 1355 Market St., is suing the company after it failed to pay its latest monthly rent, according to documents filed Friday with the California Supreme Court.
The company, Sri Nine Market Square LLC, said Twitter was “in breach of lease due to non-payment of monthly rent and additional rent” for January, amounting to US$3.4 million.
Twitter, which has been renting three floors in the building since 2011, has dropped the same amount of rent in December, which Sri Nine Market Square did from the letter of credit provided by Twitter as a security deposit, the filing said.
After using the funds, the landlord said Twitter still owed $3.16 million in unpaid rent and demanded late fees and interest plus attorneys’ fees. The social media company still occupies the property, the landlord said.
High-end real estate
In Britain, the Crown Estate has started legal proceedings against Twitter after the company collapsed on the lease at its office near Piccadilly Circus in central London.
A spokesman for the Crown Estate, which owns some of central London’s most expensive real estate, said the action followed previous contact with Twitter about unpaid rent and was in talks with the company but did not provide further details.
The Crown Estate is a large property portfolio that includes London’s Regent Street as well as the Windsor estate.
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