Sources detail how Elon Musk convinced Morgan Stanley and 11 other banks to back his Twitter bid, including ideas on how to run the business and boost revenue
Publicly, Elon Musk has said he doesn't care about the economics of owning Twitter Inc. — But during a hectic …
Bloomberg
Context & Ripple Effects
Musk's public line was that he didn't care about Twitter's economics, but the bank pitch told a different story: as detailed in follow-up coverage of how the bid succeeded, Morgan Stanley spent weeks assembling support for $25.5 billion in loans across twelve banks. The persuasion worked because Musk brought an operating thesis, not just a checkbook — he told lenders he would focus on the bottom line, floated cost and job cuts, and pitched monetization ideas such as charging fees for quoting or embedding tweets.
First-order effects
Twelve banks led by Morgan Stanley committed to the debt package backing the bid, accepting Musk's revenue ideas as sufficient collateral for what was then one of the largest leveraged buyouts ever signed.
Second-order effects
With no clear path to syndication, Morgan Stanley and six partner banks ended up planning to hold $12.7 billion of the buyout debt on their own books into early 2023 while waiting for a clearer business plan from Musk.
Third-order effects
The episode points toward banks underwriting mega-deals on a founder's operating vision rather than conventional cash-flow metrics — a structure that leaves lenders holding concentrated, illiquid positions when the promised turnaround lags.
The trend: Leveraged buyout financing is shifting from syndication-as-usual to banks warehousing debt against founder narratives, with the lender's exit timing hostage to the borrower's execution.
We went behind the scenes of how Musk convinced a dozen banks to put up $25.5 billion in financing for his Twitter bid in a matter of days. The tipping point? His vision for the social media platform. https://www.bloomberg.com/... story w/ @crystalttc @PSeligson
Musk's twitter bid is the perfect encapsulation of the right's disingenuous arguments about free speech. Parler & Gab were supposedly free of the #WokeMob but failed. Why? MAGA doesn't care about speech they want access to different kinds of people they can harass
This is moronic, if true. Musk's willingness to put in a chunk of his personal windfall in as equity doesn't make the credit thesis more credible, IMO. https://www.bloomberg.com/... https://twitter.com/...
“lenders pulled all-nighters as they rushed to get the deal together over the Easter and Passover break and into this week, people familiar with the process said. Most of the banks signed commitment letters Wednesday, which also happened to be April 20 or 4/20...” https://twitter…
1/ “Some of the lenders saw a slide presentation offering Musk's ideas around how Twitter's business could be run, as well as its financial profile and how to boost revenue.” https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Republicans this week are CANCELLING Disney now Republicans in Congress want to CANCEL Twitter executives unless they bend a knee to Elon Musk. At this point Musk is a GOP operative. https://www.cnbc.com/...
If the check is real — and I know PE was going to finance debt w real money — how can @Twitter say no after years of failed attempts to sell and operating losses? Elon Musk Says He Has Commitments for $46.5 Billion in Financing for Twitter Deal https://www.wsj.com/...
Elon Musk says he doesn't yet have any equity partners on his takeover bid for Twitter, per a federal securities filing. But he claimed he secured billions of dollars worth of loan commitments from Morgan Stanley. https://www.axios.com/...
“Twitter's board may try to call his bluff.” Dan remains Elon-skeptical and so does Wall Street. TWTR price barely moving and still way below theoretical Elon bid. https://twitter.com/...
Why? Because, according to the filing, $21b is equity (of unknown origin), $12.5 billion is margin loans (his own). He has scraped together $13 billion in debt from banks—secured against Twitter itself.