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by Animats 515 days ago
> Morgan Stanley and others, such as Bank of America and Barclays, lent Musk money to complete his $44 billion buyout of X, then known as Twitter, in 2022.

Hm. So who owes the debt? What's the collateral? Supposedly Musk bought Twitter personally, but this looks like a leveraged buyout in trouble.

The banks involved had a "sell-down letter", an agreement between the lenders that any sell-off gave the other lenders a right to participate at the same price. That expired ten days ago.[1] The interest charge is about $1.5bn/year now. A big question is how long those loans run at the old interest rate. Rates are higher now. Total revenue from X is said to be about $1bn/year, not that anybody outside really knows.

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-banks-funded-elon-m...

1 comments

So, 500m a year to whisper sweet nothings into the minds of a significant % of the world population. Or brainwashing them, whatever you like. I think it's not a bad price, someone surely feels theyre getting their moneys worth.
$1bn is revenue, not income. Income is much less.
The value of a TV network, newspaper or social media platform is not just its revenue, it’s the ability to influence and control narratives.
It's true. Anyway someone should cover the gap. Considering that X can't directly pay shareholders loans, the first principle of accounting.
It is a good deal if you want to influence millions of bots.