Elon Musk told bankers they wouldn’t lose any money on Twitter purchase

Elon Musk privately told some of the bankers who lent him $13 billion to fund his leveraged buyout of Twitter that they would not lose any money on the deal, according to five people familiar with the matter.

The verbal guarantees were made by Musk to banks as a way to reassure the lenders as the value of the social media site, now rebranded as X, fell sharply after he completed the acquisition last year.

Despite the assurances, the seven banks that lent money to the billionaire for his buyout—Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, MUFG, BNP Paribas, Mizuho and Société Générale—are facing serious losses on the debt if and when they eventually sell it.

The sources did not specify when Musk’s assurances were made, although one noted Musk had made them on several occasions. But the billionaire’s behavior, both in attempting to back out of the takeover in 2022 and more recently in alienating advertisers, has more broadly stymied the banks’ efforts to offload the debt since he engineered the takeover.

Large hedge funds and credit investors on Wall Street held conversations with the banks late last year, offering to buy the senior-most portion of the debt at roughly 65 cents on the dollar. But in recent interviews with the Financial Times, several said there was no price at which they would buy the bonds and loans, given their inability to gauge whether Linda Yaccarino, X’s chief executive, could turn the business around.

One multibillion-dollar firm that specializes in distressed debt called X’s debt “uninvestable.”

Selling the $12.5 billion of bonds and loans below 60 cents on the dollar—a price many investors believe the banks would be lucky to achieve in the current market—would imply losses before accounting for X’s interest payments of $4 billion or more, writedowns that have not yet been publicly reported by the syndicate of lenders, according to FT calculations. The debt is split between $6.5 billion of term loans, as well as $6 billion of senior and junior bonds and a $500 million revolver.

Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Barclays, MUFG, BNP Paribas, Mizuho and Société Générale declined to comment. A spokesperson for X declined to comment. Musk did not return a request for comment.

The banks have held the debt on their balance sheets instead of selling at a steep loss in the hope that X’s performance will improve following a series of cost-cutting measures. Several people involved in the transaction noted that there was no plan to sell the debt imminently, with one saying there was no guarantee the banks would be able to offload the debt even in 2024.