How Wall Street offloaded $13B of debt tied to Elon Musk's Twitter deal

6 jhatax 7 5/29/2025, 4:28:24 PM ft.com ↗

Comments (7)

duxup · 12h ago
How have the people who bought the debt done?

Were the purchasers assuming that Musk's involvement in government would improve conditions for owning that debt?

josefresco · 12h ago
I don't think they were "assuming" but rather betting on a win by republicans.

"Morgan Stanley held the lenders together, betting on the relationship of one of its then top bankers — Michael Grimes — and his client Musk, people familiar with the matter said. The bank led weekly calls to update the other lenders on X’s performance. Working together as a bloc helped avoid one single bank abruptly selling the debt at a discount."

Sounds like... collusion.

jhatax · 12h ago
First tranche sold at 93c to the dollar; second sold at 98c to the dollar, with a surprise from X which covered the 2c loss, so essentially dollar for dollar.

Morgan Stanley and Bank of America came out on top of this trade. Musk's government involvement was not known with any certainty when he bought X.

duxup · 12h ago
I mean the people who bought later. Not at the time Musk initially financed.
jhatax · 12h ago
sherdil2022 · 12h ago
How is all of this not a crime?
explain · 12h ago
Which part exactly?