NEW YORK, Oct 21 (Reuters) – The banks offering $13 billion in financing for Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) have deserted plans to promote the debt to traders due to uncertainty across the social media firm’s fortunes and losses, individuals accustomed to the matter mentioned.
The banks are usually not planning to syndicate the debt as is typical with such acquisitions, and are as an alternative planning to maintain it on their stability sheets till there’s extra investor urge for food, the sources mentioned.
The banks, which embrace Morgan Stanley , Financial institution of America , and Barclays Plc (BARC.L), declined to remark. Representatives for Musk and Twitter didn’t instantly reply to requests for remark.
Musk agreed to pay $44 billion for Twitter in April, earlier than the Federal Reserve began elevating rates of interest in a bid to struggle inflation. This made the acquisition financing look too low-cost within the eyes of credit score traders, so the banks must take a monetary hit totaling tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} to get it off their books.
Additionally stopping the banks from advertising the debt was uncertainty across the deal’s completion. Musk has tried to get out of the deal, arguing Twitter misled him over the variety of spam accounts on the platform, and solely agreed to adjust to a Delaware courtroom decide’s Oct. 28 deadline to shut the transaction earlier this month. He has not revealed particulars on Twitter’s new management and marketing strategy, and lots of debt traders are holding again till they get extra particulars on that entrance, the sources mentioned.
The debt bundle for the Twitter deal is comprised of junk-rated loans, that are dangerous due to the quantity of debt the corporate is taking up, in addition to secured and unsecured bonds.
Rising rates of interest and broader market volatility has pushed traders to keep away from some junk-rated debt. For instance, Wall Avenue banks led by Financial institution of America suffered a $700 million loss in September on the sale of about $4.55 billion in debt backing the leveraged buyout of enterprise software program firm Citrix Programs Inc.
In September, a gaggle of banks canceled efforts to promote about $4 billion of debt that financed Apollo International Administration Inc’s deal to purchase telecom and broadband belongings from Lumen Applied sciences after failing to search out consumers.
Reporting by Anirban Sen and Shankar Ramakrishnan in New York; Further reporting by Sheila Dang, Abigail Summerville and Matt Tracy; Enhancing by Josie Kao
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