Here's how many blue checks Elon Musk would need to sell just to cover interest payments at Twitter

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Elon Musk is now the begrudging owner of Twitter. It’s a company he pursued relentlessly before deciding he was no longer interested after signing a $44 billion deal to acquire it. After staring down a difficult trial for backing out of the deal, he went ahead with the purchase at the original price, showing up at the company’s San Francisco headquarters on Oct. 26 to seal the deal.

But even before signing the original paperwork in April, Musk realized there was a problem: he couldn’t afford the $44 billion transaction without liquidating other assets such as Tesla stock. So the deal was predicated on outside financing: $12.5 billion in bank loans and $7 billion in equity financing from investors like Oracle’s Larry Ellison and the crypto firm Binance.

-snip-

But a group of banks led by Morgan Stanley is set to collect $1 billion in interest each year from Musk, according to Bloomberg’s estimates.

-snip-

Will 10 million people pay for blue checkmarks?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/many-blue-checks-elon-musk-212800053.html

[msongs]

1. he coulda just paid cash out of pocket, he's worth 200 bil nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. No. You really should read the article and learn about finance. Really

Being worth X does not mean having X cash.

Take for example JQ Rando, a working stiff and his husband. They meet mortgage payments on their $1.1 million home every month and the mortgage is 95% paid off, with little other savings and no other debt.

They are well off, worth over a million dollars.

But they have little cash.



Really, you need to think about your post again.



Further, realize that if a person is CEO of a company that they founded and have the largest portion of the shares, they are not in a position to sell more than a trickle on any given month. If they sell a large part of their shares, for any reason, their stock will tank and their fortune deflates very significantly.

[msongs]

17. he could cash out his posessions and pay out of pocket. Really nt

[Bernardo de La Paz]

19. And now you haven't even read the post you are replying to. I explain why he can't. Duh. . . nt

[msongs]

24. not interested in your personal attacks but thanxs for playing nt

[ProfessorGAC]

22. Not Legally

A CEO is limited as to the number of shares they can sell, it has to be quarterly, and the intent to sell has to be announced publicly well ahead of the sale. I think it's 30 days, but that may not be the exact number.
The concern for people like Musk is that announcing an intent to sell could throw shockwaves that spook speculators & create a sell-off by those not so restricted.
Since he measures his own personal value by net worth, a drop in total asset value hurts.
This is especially true given that the huge chuck of his net worth that is Tesla is already tremendously overvalued. He starts talking sell-off of his own shares & the house of cards could collapse.
He already greatly overpaid for Twitter and a loss of total value exposes this as even dumber.
He would never do that, even of it were legal.

[Pete Ross Junior]

3. If Twitter goes out of business ...

It's not what Elon has in mind, but it's not a terrible outcome.

Don't overestimate the importance of Twitter, just because one billionaire scumbag did.

[brush]

4. Interest payments? He had to borrow money from the Saudis...

to buy twitter? So he's a billionaire just like trump is a billionaire...because he puts the meme out there?

Sheesh!

He over pays for twitter and has to pay a monthly note?

Some billionaire. Hahahahahahahaha!

[sl8]

6. Where did you see that he borrowed money from the Saudis? nt

[brush]

7. It was on another thread. If he has interest payments...

he borrowed from somebody.

[sl8]

10. He definitely borrowed, but I haven't seen anything about him getting it from the Saudis.

If you have a credible source, I'd be interested.

[brush]

11. Like I said, I saw it on another thread. But that's not the point...

the point is after all this hoopla about the big, rich multi-billionaire going back and forth about buying twitter, and it turns out he has to borrow the money.

Hahahahahahhahaha!

[sl8]

12. Well, it's kind of the point, for me.

I would hate to be spreading unconfirmed information or misinformation.

I think you'll find that most or all very wealthy people borrow constantly, most of their wealth is not very liquid. It's also one way they can avoid paying income tax.

See https://www.npr.org/2022/08/25/1119412217/how-the-ultrawealthy-devise-ways-to-not-pay-their-share-of-taxes

How the ultrawealthy devise ways to not pay their share of taxes
August 25, 20221:20 PM ET
Heard on Fresh Air
DAVE DAVIES

[...]

EISINGER: Yeah, sure. So for the billionaire class, what's really important is how much their wealth grows in a given year. The rest of us, we have income, and we need income to live. But for the billionaire class, they don't actually need income. They avoid income. If you avoid income, you avoid taxes. And so it turns out that the billionaire class pays much less in tax than average people. And what we found is that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk and Michael Bloomberg and Carl Icahn, they literally, in recent years, paid zero in federal income tax. And what you do is you let your mountain of wealth grow over time. You let Amazon stock grow. Or if you're Warren Buffett, you let Berkshire Hathaway go up and up and up. And you never sell. And if you never sell, you don't take any income.

And how are these people living if they don't sell? Well, often, what they do is they borrow against their wealth. And if you're borrowing against your wealth, that's not taxed. So ultimately, what we found was that the ultrawealthy in this country, they had wealth growth of $400 billion from 2014 to 2018, and they paid about $14 billion in taxes. And so average people pay roughly 15% in federal income taxes effectively, and the ultrawealthy paid 3.4% when compared to their wealth growth.

[...]

On edit:
I think I found the thread you're referring to and they don't provide a source, either. I posted and asked for their source.

[brush]

13. Yeah, sure. But here's your misinformation.

https://search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?hspart=tro&hsimp=yhs-freshy&grd=1&type=Y219_F163_204671_090322&p=did+musk+borrow+from+the+saudis+to+buy+twitter

https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-faces-backlash-over-saudi-financing-1755606#:~:text=Elon%20Musk%27s%20Twitter%20purchase%20is%20facing%20backlash%20for,about%20the%20future%20of%20the%20social%20media%20company.

[sl8]

14. Thank you for providing a source.

Note that it doesn't say that Musk borrowed from the Saudis. The loans are from banks. The Saudi prince is one of the equity investors.

Newsweek's source is this Reuters' article:
https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/who-is-financing-elon-musks-44-billion-deal-buy-twitter-2022-10-07/

The Reuters article lists the lenders and the equity investors. I tried to copy & paste it here, but it comes out a mess.

[brush]

15. Yeah, sure.

[Meowmee]

25. I am enjoying reading this exchange, making me laugh

Agree with you 😀

[Bernardo de La Paz]

20. No. Musk is asset-rich, cash-poor (relatively). He has all the cash needs for day-to-day

But, as I explained to a poster up thread, Musk can't sell much of his assets (stocks) because that would send investors away from the stock ("Musk thinks something else is a better investment, I better get out" ). Founders and major stockholders in that position arrange a steady monthly sale of a small portion of that asset so they can diversify and so that it doesn't create any ripples.

It's like being house-rich and cash poor. You might "own" most of a house, but that doesn't mean you can sell it and buy a $300,000 Maserati (or whatever they go for), because you still need a house to live in.


tRump however is not the same. He owes tons of money on over-valued assets. He's not much of a billionaire, maybe even not actually one. He is just a grifter who pretends to live like one.

[brush]

23. House poor. Good analogy.

[leftstreet]

5. Should have paid the $1b penalty and walked away

Moron

[brush]

8. Yep. Must not be that rich if he didn't want to lose the 1 billion.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

21. Oh, he's that rich, but his ego has a hold on him. He wants to save vile hate speech. . . . nt

[highplainsdem]

9. He's planning other ways to monetize Twitter. Paywalled videos, for instance,

which will include porn. Twitter will take part of the payment and send the rest to the content creator. He's reportedly hoping to compete with YouTube. But with the porn it sounds like OnlyFans.

And he's reportedly planning to let anyone on Twitter DM celebrities for a fee of a few dollars, though I think the celebrity will have to agree to this, and I assume Twitter will offer them a cut.

[Wednesdays]

27. If he's going to allow anyone to DM celebrities, he'll need additional security

and moderators to screen out trolls and troublemakers, not to mention psychos and potential terrorists. That's going to cost him more than what he'd gain from the fees.

[TheBlackAdder]

16. He probably has an arrangement with China, Russia & Saudis--every anti-democratic post gets $100K.

[Meowmee]

26. Something is going on in that direction imo

[Hekate]

18. I find this very humorous. Sure he has $44B to burn thru, but I don't think he anticipated...

…piling it all in the middle of the public square and setting a torch to it while people point and laugh.