Twitter has frozen equity awards accounts for its employees, ahead of the deadline to close the Elon Musk buyout.

Twitter alerted staff they would not be able to trade or access their shares from the company’s Equity Award Centre, “in anticipation of the closing of the pending acquisition of Twitter by an entity controlled by Elon Musk.”

“This freeze allows Schwab to perform final reconciliation of employee accounts prior to close of the acquisition,” the update reads.

Wall Street took this freeze as a sure sign that Twitter expects the deal to be completed and sent stock surging 1.9 per cent after a Bloomberg report.

Twitter and Musk have until October 28 to finalise the deal, or the planned trial brought by Twitter after Musk attempted to void the A$70 billion deal will go ahead.