Wall Street lenders bankrolling Elon Musk’s $44bn acquisition of Twitter may soon find themselves in an awkward position: should they help the world’s richest person scupper the deal and thereby lose out on one of the industry’s biggest paydays?
Musk suggested this week that $13bn in debt financing crucial for the Twitter deal could be at risk if the social media company does not satisfy his stated concerns about fake accounts on the platform. This, Musk says, could give him grounds to walk away from a deal, which has become less attractive since tech valuations plummeted.
For the banks working on the deal, though, a huge payday is on the line. Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Barclays and Allen & Co stand to earn $191.5mn in fees, the largest fee pool so far this year and the third-biggest since 2020, according to Refinitiv data.