[slantedview]

This called a "leveraged buyout". Everyone who learns about them is shocked, and they absolutely should be illegal, but they aren't. It's very common for companies purchased in this way to go bankrupt, because the debt is too heavy a burden. Many name brand companies have gone down over the last decade because of this.

[sgerenser]

Last decade? Leveraged buyouts were a big thing in the 80s/90s, so this has been going on for over 30 years. This research showed that about 20% of LBOs resulted in bankruptcy: https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1gfygl4r8661f....

[TheLoafOfBread]

Lot of people who trusted Elon are going to lose their money then. Are we going to see consequences on Elon's well being?

[pmlnr]

> Lot of people who trusted Elon are going to lose their money

Good. Trust Elon the same way you'd trust Lex Luthor.

[slantedview]

Those people should have done more diligence. The text messages with Larry Ellison show he committed 1 billion dollars more or less on a whim.

It's pretty easy to see now that buying Twitter and saddling it with debt was never going to work.

[saurik]

Yeah but like, if nothing else I imagine Musk is never going to get people to hand him a billion dollars on a whim again? I would think that screwing over this many investors simply has to cause a blow to one's credibility.