Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover Is Now the Worst Buyout for Banks Since the Financial Crisis
wsj.com
Nearly two years after Elon Musk’s acquisition, X’s business is still struggling to climb out of the deep hole it fell into under his ownership.
The $13 billion that Elon Musk borrowed to buy Twitter has turned into the worst merger-finance deal for banks since the 2008-09 financial crisis.
The seven banks involved in the deal, including Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, lent the money to the billionaire’s holding company to take the social-media platform, now named X, private in October 2022. Banks that provide loans for takeovers generally sell the debt quickly to other investors to get it off their balance sheets, making money on fees.
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I'm guessing here, I don't think Musk, the person, took out the loans, I think xitter did. So if xitter defaults, Musk's assets aren't on the line.
Edit for clarity: 'leveraged buyout with debt reassignment post acquisition'
That doesn't make sense. That sounds like twitter borrowed money to buy itself to space karen
'he only used some of his cash to buy Twitter for $44 billion. For the rest of it, he used a tactic called a leveraged buyout and spent $13 billion of borrowed money on the acquisition. And now Twitter—not Elon—is on the hook for that loan.'
Xitter may have taken in more loans after Elon's take over. But a company can't borrow money to buy itself. So yea his assets are very much on the line. I wonder what deal he struck with the Saudi lenders.
'he only used some of his cash to buy Twitter for $44 billion. For the rest of it, he used a tactic called a leveraged buyout and spent $13 billion of borrowed money on the acquisition. And now Twitter—not Elon—is on the hook for that loan.'
Pretty sure they can. It's how a lot of private equity firms finance their purchases. Also the reason that Toys R Us went under. They were doing fine except the massive loan payments they had to pay. Those loans financed the companies' buyout.
I'm pretty sure they lent him $12B and he largely put up the remaining $30B.
No Musk had to take the loans out in order to buy Twitter and turn it into the shit hole that is xitter. Now whether or not they are personal loans or he bought them under another company he owns, that's a different question.