The fate of Elon Musk’s deal to buy Twitter now comes down to the money

New York
CNN Business
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The countdown is now on for Elon Musk and Twitter to close their $44 billion acquisition deal by October 28 or be forced to again prepare for a trial after a judge agreed on Thursday pause the legal proceedings.

What everyone is now waiting on: Musk needs to actually have the money to hand over.

Even the world’s richest man needs a little help for an acquisition of this size. In April, Musk announced he had lined up $46.5 billion in financing for the deal, including two debt commitment letters from Morgan Stanley and other unnamed financial institutions (one for $13 billion and another for $12.5 billion, the latter of which was later reduced to $6.25 billion). Musk himself also committed approximately $21 billion in equity to fund the deal, and later raised an additional $7 billion in equity from investors such as Oracle founder Larry Ellison and cryptocurrency firm Binance.

Much of the sticking point between Musk and Twitter (TWTR) now appears to be over uncertainty around the status of those financing arrangements.

Elon Musk walks from the the justice center in Wilmington, Del., Monday, July 12, 2021.
The Twitter-Musk trial is now on pause
Musk’s team had said in a filing earlier Thursday that there was no need to press on with the ligation because he had committed to closing the deal at the originally agreed upon terms and the banks that had committed debt financing to help him pay for it were “working cooperatively to fund the close.”