One of the ways to stay rich is to use leverage. Using 100% of your own funds is unheard of. Musk obviously is not going to risk $44b of his personal fortune on Twitter.
He may not be particularly leveraged, but one could argue that a significant portion of his net worth in the form of Tesla's sky-high valuation is more or less "faith-based". To what extent his Twitter excursion would erode that faith and precipitate a steep drop in Tesla's stock price is still not completely known. So in that sense, it's possible to debate about whether he really "has the money" to do this deal.
Re:Musk SEC Filing
by JumpCrisscross on Monday June 06, 2022 @10:43AM
(#31641133)
> it's possible to debate about whether he really "has the money" to do this deal
Sure, but given the facts on the ground, he has more than enough capital to personally fund the equity. (The debt, LBO style, is held on Twitter's books.) We know there remain commitments from other investors for the equity, so that alone should draw a line under such discussions.
Elon Musk absolutely can fund this deal. He may not want to. And that isn't true in every state of the world. But currently, and in any proximate world state, him not having the money isn't an issue.
It's somewhat wild to posit this given how much of his balance sheet is public knowledge. He doesn't have the liquidity, sure. But there's a wide gap between illiquidity and insolvency, and he's not particularly leveraged.