Opinion: Elon Musk is desperate to walk away from his $61b Twitter debacle | Stephen Bartholomeusz
, accusing Twitter of refusing to supply data that would enable him to make his own evaluation of the proportion of fake and spam accounts on the platform.Previously, he had indicated he might lower the $US54.20 a share offer, or ditch it, after suggesting that Twitter knew that its own estimate that no more than five per cent of its accounts were false or spam accounts was knowingly false.
Twitter responded by saying it would continue to “co-operatively” share information in accordance with the agreement and intended to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms.It’s not surprising that Twitter wants the deal to proceed. Before Musk bid its share price was below $US40. It spiked to $US51 when the offer was tabled but has since fallen back to $US39.56.
The second attempt to structure the financing last month saw the leveraged loan remain at $US13 billion but the margin loan halved to $US6.25 billion and the equity component increased to $US27 billion. Musk has said he has $US7 billion of equity from external parties committed to the deal. There’s no real evidence, beyond the $US7 billion already committed from other investors, that he is making significant headway on raising the rest of the $US33.5 billion of equity required to complete the latest version of the funding for his bid, which leaves him personally exposed to filling in the $US26.5 billion hole in the equity component.