Everyone knew Elon Musk was overpaying for Twitter when he bought the social media platform back in 2022 . That’s precisely why the billionaire tried to back out of the deal before being forced to finalize the purchase after a court order. But we’re now learning more details about just how dumb buying Twitter was in financial terms, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal Tuesday.
Apparently, it was the worst deal since the global financial crisis in 2008. Seven banks loaned Elon Musk money totaling $13 billion in 2022 to help him buy Twitter, now known by the obnoxiously generic name X, and every single one has been unable to offload the debt without incurring “major losses” from the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal. This means the loans are just sitting on the balance sheets of these banks.
In fact, the Journal explains that this wasn’t just one of the worst deals since 2008, it’s one of the worst deals of all time. Musk and other investors brought roughly $30 billion in cash to the table, while the banks supplied the other $13 billion to finalize the purchase. But we now know the people who work at those banks have felt considerable financial pain from agreeing to something so stupid.
How much pain? As the Journal tells it, top investment bankers at Barclays were told at a dinner in late 2023 that everyone would be getting at least a 40% pay cut. After everyone got their bonuses for the year, about 50 of the company’s 200 directors left, .