Elon Musk’s takeover financing deal could clip Twitter’s wings

The Tesla tycoon's complex bid for the social media platform will load the tech firm with debt

If you want to know who the world's richest man has on speed dial, then a regulatory filing on Thursday provided an insight. Elon Musk announced a score of new backers for his $44bn (35.6bn) Twitter takeover, including Oracle tycoon Larry Ellison, the crypto market's leading trading platform, the Qatari sovereign wealth fund and a Saudi prince.

If this was Tesla's boss displaying his power network, it was also an admission that - despite recent words to the contrary - the numbers behind his audacious bid do matter. Discussing his offer last month, Musk said: I don't care about the economics at all." For some of Wall Street's biggest banks, Tesla's shareholders and even Twitter users, the economics are very important indeed.