Some of Silicon Valley’s top venture capitalists, a Saudi royal and a fund linked to disgraced hip hop mogul Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, are among the investors who helped Elon Musk buy X for $44 billion two years ago, according to a court file.
A federal judge in San Francisco ordered X on Tuesday to unseal the list of shareholders who were part of the group that took the company formerly known as Twitter private in October 2022.
The filing lists nearly 100 investors who own a stake in X, according to The Washington Post.
Well-known VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal al Saud and Twitter founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey are among those who own a stake in X, the filing revealed.
Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle who considers himself a friend of Musk, reportedly contributed $1 billion to the investment group that bought Twitter.
X had resisted efforts to reveal the list of investors. The company is being sued by several former Twitter employees who claim Musk violated their arbitration agreements by failing to pay certain fees after buying the company.
Jacob Silverman, a technology journalist who was represented by lawyers for the nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, filed a motion asking the court to unseal the documents. His plea was granted by US District Judge Susan Illston.
Katie Townsend, legal director for the Press Committee, praised Illston’s decision, which confirms “the general public’s interest in knowing who owns X.”
To complete the purchase, Musk borrowed $13 billion from several banks, including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays.
Together, Musk is on track for annual interest payments to the banks that add up to more than $1 billion.
An analysis by The Wall Street Journal earlier this week found that the $13 billion in loans Musk took out from banks turned out to be the worst merger financing deal for lenders since the 2008-2009 recession — largely because of the fact that they have not been able to sell the debt to other investors.
Banks that lend to mergers and acquisitions make money from the fees they collect after getting a buyer to relieve them of the debt incurred within a short period of time.
But X’s poor finances mean selling the debt would put the banks at a loss. As a result, the loans are what in industry jargon are known as “non-performing” – meaning they are stuck on their balance sheets.
According to the Journal, Twitter loans have gone unsold for longer than any similar deal since the 2008-2009 crisis.
Earlier this year, documents leaked by X showed its value had fallen by more than 70% – to around $12.5 billion.
Fidelity, the mutual fund giant that is also among the investors that helped Musk buy the company, reduced the value of its stock to somewhere between $15 billion and $16 billion.
At the time of the purchase, Musk and the lenders knew that the $44 billion he paid was far more than the company’s current value.
But banks decided to give Musk the loans anyway because of the lure of serving the man who at the time was the world’s richest person, according to the Journal.
After Musk bought Twitter, he reduced the company’s workforce by about 80%. Musk has also struggled to win back advertisers who left the site in response to its moderate content policies that critics say has allowed hate speech to spread.
The post has requested a comment from X.
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