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To buy Twitter, Musk has to keep banks, investors on board

18 Comments
By TOM KRISHER and MATT O'BRIEN

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18 Comments
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Fails to do due diligence but signs a binding contract. Gets buyers remorse (or more likely tris to leverage a lower purchase price) and tries to hang the company out to dry. Tries to get out of the deal. Sues. Fails. Decides to buy the company at the original price (because his legal efforts were very likely to fail spectacularly and he might be forced to testify about some embarrassing issues). Now struggling to find people to purchase debt in a company with mediocre profits and an “eccentric”. Majority share holder.

Yeah, there’s executive excellence, right there. Could be an entire series of HBR cases in how NOT to handle M&A.

One wonders how many seats on the Board the banks will demand and get.

7 ( +8 / -1 )

The article literally suggests the opposite.

No, it doesn’t. It literally says that the investment banks that are now legally obligated to provide debt financing via a bind contract are having trouble finding buyers for those debt offerings and may have to lend the money themselves which is not what they intended or want to do.

5 ( +6 / -1 )

Banks would sell the debt to institutional investors, but there's not much appetite now to take part in takeovers that saddle companies with big debts. Banks could be on the hook to make loans themselves.

“The banks would be really happy to not to have to take the risk of funding these loans," said Erik Gordon, a law and business professor at the University of Michigan. “The agreements seem to be very strong, but I think the banks have their lawyers pulling all-nighters trying to get them out of it if they can.”

2 successive paragraphs from the article.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

If Musk cannot come up the money, Twitter can seize Tesla,to satisfy the judgement,this judge ruling should make Musk a little worrisome

LOL, no. There is no "judgment" as no formal legal decsion has been reached. If for some reason Musk could not come up with the money (which seems excedingly unlikely even considering his relative lack of liquidity as a portion of his total net worth) I would think that the most he would have to pay is the billion dollar break up fee.

More likely, he would have to dillute his ownership of Tesla to generate the cash necessary. But there is not reason to believe that Twitter woud be able to "seize" Tesla (a company several times twitters's size on any by any measure) or even a put a lean on a portion of Tesla's assets.

4 ( +4 / -0 )

I think Musk signed a check his @.. could not cash. He was trying to manipulate stock markets to liquidate some Tesla stock, and maybe get a company at a discount.

Like trump fanboys, the general public and his fanboys are starting to see Musk for the successful scammer that he is. He has shown to be morally bankrupt both professionally and public.

3 ( +6 / -3 )

This might be the most expensive mistake anyone has ever made in an Internet spat. Musk let his mouth run, when he got annoyed by Twitter moderation, and may have talked himself out of a good bit of ownership of his own company.

Posters say stupid stuff on this site every day, but it doesn't cost them billions. Musk is learning that with billions comes the power to make big moves, but it also comes with the power to make big mistakes.

3 ( +4 / -1 )

To buy Twitter, Musk has to keep banks, investors on board

Well, of course.

3 ( +3 / -0 )

There are two conflicting views here.

In tech sector terms, social media is a questionable investment. It can be blocked or banned by governments at the drop of a hat, its advertising model can be destabilised by governments or Apple, and distributed alternatives offering privacy from state oversight and censorship could just replace it. So the risk of losing pretty much all your money, is quite high. Unlike many investments where a company can transition to a new market, or at least flog off real world assets.

In finance sector terms, its not so bad. Musk is paying $54 and Twitter is $49. That's 10% over the odds. Japanese companies have been known to overpay by a larger percentage on lower profile deals. There aren't that many global social media brands, and Twitter has embedded itself into the techscape thanks largely to Trump's use of it. Almost everyone who now announces anything, uses it. There are a vast number of ways in which it could be expanded, and a number in which it could be monetised, copying TikTok and other Chinese trends - tech that was making a fortune in China until Xi took a hammer to the sector. Plus Musk has a habit of increasing the value of stuff with just his own tweets, which is a useful way of increasing a share price. And for most of the investors, the enormous sums of cash are only a percentage of their annual activity. It wouldn't be the first time they had rolled the dice on a few billion, and losing it won't sink them.

Time will tell which was right.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Muskrat ought to stick to Tesla cars. He wants everything he sees. Big Money GOT NO SOUL.

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Musk has been making some really Stupid comments on Twitter recently regarding Russia & Taiwan - I guess, this is a signal of how Stressed he is at present.

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Save twitter from that clown !!.

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

I personally don't like Elon Musk, and any product that relates to Elon Musk, I believe he is not a good manager for any job, and shouldn't be any leader. I wish Twitter not to sell him the Twitter, now I don't use anything that affiliate with Elon Musk, but I daily use Twitter I don't want to lose my use of Twitter because of the disgusting Elon Musk.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

JTCOct. 9  09:34 pm JST

Musk has been making some really Stupid comments on Twitter recently regarding Russia & Taiwan - I guess, this is a signal of how Stressed he is at present.

'Stressed'? More like STUPID. He needs to stick to Tesla cars. He's greedy as hell, he wants the Big Prize, the whole pie. In that regard he's another trump and that's dangerous.

-1 ( +1 / -2 )

Now struggling to find people to purchase debt 

The article literally suggests the opposite.

-3 ( +2 / -5 )

If Musk cannot come up the money, Twitter can seize Tesla,to satisfy the judgement,this judge ruling should make Musk a little worrisome

-5 ( +0 / -5 )

Nemo,when you get a judgement in the US against someone, they have a right to most of your liquid assets, and if he loses,he got put up a Billion Dollar appeal bond ,to appeal the ruling

-5 ( +0 / -5 )

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