Musk's efforts to finance Twitter acquisition on hold amid spat with takeover target
Twitter Inc
$53.70
11:00 03/01/25
Elon Musk's funding efforts for his attempted takeover of Twitter are being stymied by the uncertainty around whether the deal will finally go through.
Just last week, the billionaire chief executive officer of Tesla, threatened to walk away from his offer if the social media platform did not provide evidence for its estimate that under 5.0% of its user accounts were false or spam.
Musk has to find $33.5bn of financing for the transaction
Discussions with potential investors for $2.0-3.0bn of preferred equity financing have been put on hold, Reuters reported citing a source.
Separately, Musk had reportedly raised $7.1bn from a group of equity co-investors and had attempted to arrange a $12.5bn margin loan against his shares in Tesla but attempts to secure the latter were scrapped in May.
Banks' efforts to get $13.0bn of debt to finance part of the purchase off their own books were also being hampered.
Were Musk to decide he did not want to own Twitter, then lenders' attempts to syndicate that debt could be complicated.
However, that possibility was seen as remote.