Will Elon Lose Control of Twitter?

It comes down to trying to scare the creditors into selling their loans to Elon at a discount. That could fail if the creditors, instead, push Twitter into involuntary bankruptcy. Or the current creditors could sell the debt to distressed-debt specialists. In which case the creditors end up owning and controlling Twitter.

There is a BFR-load of ego at stake, too. The article doesn't go into it beyond this: "If Elon buys the debt, then he can keep control of Twitter for whatever perverse reasons he has for still wanting to own this pig." But it would also embarrass Elon in front of his fellow equity holders, who can still cling to the fiction their shares are worth something until the creditors get frisky.

> So what is Elon’s game here? Perhaps, as I have written before, he is essentially cosplaying as a bankrupt entity—by not paying his bills as they become due—so that he can scare the big Wall Street banks that own Twitter’s $13 billion of debt to sell it to him at a steep discount, perhaps at a price even lower than the 50 cents on the dollar it would probably trade for now, if marketed to investors. Not that Elon necessarily wants to buy the debt, even at a big discount. But this may be the path of least resistance if he wants to prevent the company from falling into the hands of the voracious distressed debt community on Wall Street who are in the “loan-to-own” business.

> If the debt gets bought by the likes of DoubleLine Capital, or Apollo, or Oaktree Capital, then all bets are off for Elon and he will lose control of Twitter.

I have little reason to think Musk will lose control. It's much too valuable (politically, socially, and for his business) even if he keeps losing money.