Elon Musk’s takeover financing deal could clip Twitter’s wings

theguardian.com:

If you want to know who the world’s richest man has on speed dial, then a regulatory filing on Thursday provided an insight. Elon Musk announced a score of new backers for his $44bn (£35.6bn) Twitter takeover, including Oracle tycoon Larry Ellison, the crypto market’s leading trading platform, the Qatari sovereign wealth fund and a Saudi prince.

If this was Tesla’s boss displaying his power network, it was also an admission that – despite recent words to the contrary – the numbers behind his audacious bid do matter. Discussing his offer last month, Musk said: “I don’t care about the economics at all.” For some of Wall Street’s biggest banks, Tesla’s shareholders and even Twitter users, the economics are very important indeed.

The initial funding package behind the takeover, which requires shareholder approval,was initially split into three elements: $21bn in equity, or Elon Musk’s own cash; $12.5bn of loans secured against Musk’s shares in Tesla, the electric carmaker that he runs; and a further $13bn in loans from a group of seven banks, secured against Twitter itself.

That changed on Thursday. According to a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the equity commitment had risen to $27.25bn, helped by a group of 18 investors including Ellison ($1bn), the Binance trading platform ($500m) and Qatar Holding ($375m), an investment arm of the Gulf state’s wealth fund. They are putting in $7.1bn, plus a contribution from the Saudi Arabian investor Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who also plans to roll his $1.9bn Twitter stake into the deal rather than cashing out.

As part of this reshuffle, the loans secured against Musk’s 15.7% stake in Tesla have been halved to $6.25bn. The bank loan commitment stays the same.

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