IIRC, Musk makes Twitter a 100% cash offer. Twitter accepts, but writes the deal such that if either side pulls out of the deal, then a $1 billion penalty will be applied.
Musk goes to the banks and secures a $20 billion-ish loan, putting TSLA as collateral.
Musk starts to sell TSLA for the other $20 billion of cash. Stock tanks as a result, only ~$8 billion sold on public filing documents.
Musk runs around looking for another $12 billion for the last week or so.
And now we have today where it looks like he is failing his side of the deal. If Musk lost the $20 billion-ish from the banks due to TSLA being too low, it makes sense for him to give up.
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All that is going on right now is Musk trying to blame Twitter for the failed deal, so that he avoids the $1 billion penalty written into the contract.
I am curious if his inability to raise money for the acquisition is a strong signal of the sliding value of social media. Facebook and Twitter seem to be on a streak of trying to pivot, Reddit is in private equity. Musk is fairly well-connected, so if he's unable to get other rich people to invest, their speculative value (at the height of their value) may be vanishing.
Had you posted under any other topic relating to Musk before today, you would have had replies here claiming "Musk is highly intelligent and helped create at least 3, multi-billion dollar companies, with 2 more in the pipeline (neuralink and boring). How dare you question his genius".
Since there aren't, I'm using this comment as a reminder against confirmation bias.
He is all of those things. But he's also full of shit.
Those two thing can be true at the same time.
I follow many VC Twitter accounts and it seems to me, even the 'nice' ones are giant turds when it comes to any kind of social or communitarian understanding of the world.
But they understand startups very well.
It's common among successful people, I think, to be really great in their core competency, to have fairly astute understanding of other things and yet be completely glib at the same time, and lack the self awareness to recognize it, supported by the fact that 'nobody challenges them' on anything.
IIRC, Musk makes Twitter a 100% cash offer. Twitter accepts, but writes the deal such that if either side pulls out of the deal, then a $1 billion penalty will be applied.
Musk goes to the banks and secures a $20 billion-ish loan, putting TSLA as collateral.
Musk starts to sell TSLA for the other $20 billion of cash. Stock tanks as a result, only ~$8 billion sold on public filing documents.
Musk runs around looking for another $12 billion for the last week or so.
And now we have today where it looks like he is failing his side of the deal. If Musk lost the $20 billion-ish from the banks due to TSLA being too low, it makes sense for him to give up.
------
All that is going on right now is Musk trying to blame Twitter for the failed deal, so that he avoids the $1 billion penalty written into the contract.