Musk turns into media baron with Twitter deal amid Large Tech sell-off

Elon Musk has joined the elite membership of social media barons after clinching a $44bn takeover of Twitter in the identical week that buyers wiped a whole bunch of billions of {dollars} from Large Tech valuations.

Musk’s drawn-out acquisition of Twitter, which he launched in April however tried to abort in July, has closed simply as a decade-long increase within the digital promoting that fuels social media grinds to a halt, bringing share costs crashing down throughout Silicon Valley.

As world monetary markets nosedived this 12 months, banks have been pressured to stump up $12.5bn themselves to assist finance Musk’s acquisition, a part of greater than $35bn price of debt from a string of mega-takeovers that buyers refused to finance, in response to interviews and FT calculations.

Lenders together with Morgan Stanley, Financial institution of America and Barclays face losses on the Twitter financing package deal that would prime $1bn, even earlier than Large Tech valuations have been hammered this week. “I don’t know what the trail is to do away with a few of [this debt],” mentioned one senior debt banker in New York.

When banks agreed to fund a portion of Musk’s bid to amass Twitter, it seemed like a profitable deal that might entail them taking part in one of many largest leveraged buyouts in historical past. Many banks raced to supply financing, as they tried to solidify their relationship with one of many world’s wealthiest people.

However since Musk’s Twitter negotiations started six months in the past, Wall Avenue’s debt machine has gummed up and bankers mentioned lenders would want to supply hefty reductions to maneuver the riskiest debt tied to the deal.

Hovering inflation and the price of residing disaster caught up with Silicon Valley this week, as Large Tech reported a sudden slowdown in its key revenue engines. Practically $1tn was slashed from the market worth of Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft on the lowest level of the week, with solely Apple bucking the downward pattern.

Buyers penalised the mother or father corporations of Fb and Google for what many noticed as profligate spending on staffing and long-term analysis, comparable to Mark Zuckerberg’s “metaverse” initiatives.

“The massive story right here is the shortcoming of Large Tech corporations to handle their prices,” mentioned David Older, head of equities at €33.2bn asset supervisor Carmignac, who owns positions in Amazon, Microsoft and Google. “These mega-cap tech corporations have been speaking about getting their prices in line and speaking a few slowing macro backdrop however they simply didn’t act on it.”

Musk has promised to chop jobs and prices at Twitter, whereas boosting product innovation.

In Las Vegas, a number of the world’s main tech buyers gathered on the Goldman Sachs personal web corporations convention on the lush Encore at Wynn resort.

One attendee instructed FT that the temper on the gathering, which featured prime dealmakers from Yuri Milner’s DST and development fairness investor Common Atlantic, was funereal.

“Individuals are realising that a number of the corporations they’ve invested in is not going to come again anytime quickly,” one attendee mentioned.