Elon Musk Pledges to Finish Twitter Purchase Deal by Court’s Friday Deadline

Billionaire industrialist Elon Musk might actually seal the deal on his purchase of social media giant Twitter later this week. He told a group of financiers working with him on the purchase that it would be completed by the October 28 deadline set by a judge.

Musk made the pledge during a Monday conference call with a group of seven Wall Street lenders led by Morgan Stanley, who are providing $13 billion worth of debt financing to grease the wheels of the deal, according to Bloomberg.

An undisclosed source told Bloomberg that the banks expected to receive a borrowing notice on Thursday and the cash would be held in escrow.

A Delaware chancery judge gave Musk until the end of the month to finalize the deal, putting a case against him on hold beginning on October 6. If he fails, Twitter’s lawsuit against him for trying to back out of the deal after signing it will proceed to the trial stage.

Musk and Twitter’s board agreed on a $6 billion purchase back in April, which will see the industrialist buy every single share of the company himself, effectively ending its public ownership. The purchase meant taking on considerable debt, and banks hoped to sell off $6.5 billion of leveraged loans and another $6 billion in junk bonds. However, the shift in the economic winds over the last six months has changed the calculations for the financiers.

Many US economists are now predicting that the Federal Reserve’s drive to stomp out high inflation will require pushing the US into a recession, especially since the economy was widely perceived to be “burning out” amid record-low unemployment over the summer. Indeed, Musk himself recently predicted the recession would last into 2024. An economic downturn - which will increase unemployment and undercut employees’ collective bargaining ability - would be welcomed by many corporate leaders, including at major banks like Bank of America, as one leaked memo revealed.

Musk has made many promises about changes to Twitter if or when he becomes its owner, including mass firings, reconsidering the platform’s policies on censoring harmful speech, and clearing out what he says are huge numbers of bot accounts. Musk’s attempt to back out of the Twitter deal over the summer was in large part justified by claims that Twitter had failed to furnish information he had demanded about bots, or automated accounts, on the site.

WIth an estimated net worth of $214 billion, Musk is by some measures the world’s richest man. He owns several companies including spacefaring company SpaceX, electric carmaker Tesla, and engineering firm The Boring Company.