It goes like this:

* 13B from a party of banks (i.e. Morgan Stanley and friends), in exchange for who knows what (private equity?)

* 12.5B from pretty much the same party of banks but as a loan that takes Musk's TSLA stock as collateral

* 21B from Musk itself (idk under what conditions)

So he could easily "not afford it" if he wanted to.

That's how he planned to finance it, but I don't see why a court would limit itself to those assets.

Unless his net worth drops by about 75%, he can afford it.

>but I don't see why a court would limit itself to those assets

If the court rules "the deal has to go forward" I don't see why other assets would be considered.

Also,

Net worth != seizable property.

Also,

Net worth >> real net worth > realizable assets > seizable assets.

To be honest, if Musk were ordered to pay the $44B today, out of his pocket, I don't think he would be able to.

All I'm saying is, even if Twitter wins (which I think they will, in the very long end), there's a long road between that decision and having the actual money (or stock or w/e) land in their hands.

On top of that, there's no way Musk could go to jail because of this (it'd be very hard to prove there was wrongdoing behind this), so there really is no pressure on him to pay the $44B, he could drag this on foreeeeveeeeeerrrr ...

Stocks of a corporation incorporated in the US are completely seizeable.

If he won't cooperate, he could be jailed for contempt (they don't need to prove wrongdoing during the deal, disobeying a court order is itself enough). They could also probably just send a court order to his stock broker.

Fair enough, I think you are right on that.

AFAIK, there are two separate deals here, one between Twitter and Musk and one between a collection of banks and Musk. Musk didn’t make the first deal contingent on getting the second one.

Having that second deal in place convinced the Twitter board that Musk had the money and the liquidity to pay the amount he offered for Twitter, but otherwise that deal is irrelevant for this case.

Courts take a real dim view of that kind of game. When a billionaire "can't afford" to pay a court judgment, the courts don't just shrug and say "stuff happens". They know when they're being played, and they can play back a lot harder than Musk can.

Apparently he changed his financing breakdown on 2022-05-25 [0], so as of now it's $13 billion from banks and the rest himself as far as I know.

[0]: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-05-26/elon-c... (paywall bypass at https://archive.ph/e95rj)