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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   27866 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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You are 100% correct companies don’t go bankrupt because they want to. They go bankrupt because they had a bill to pay and their bank account say 0.

Not necessarily. That is what a strategic bankruptcy is. Chapter 7 means twitter is worthless and the assets that remain sold off to pay off creditors, and musk loses everything. Chapter 11 allows twitter to reorg while giving Musk an opportunity to retain some of his wealth and run the company. Creditors would prefer to get paid than not, so reorg is better than defaulting. let's say twitter is worth $30 billion. $18 billion is debt. that $12 billion does not go away. It does not go to the creditors. unless twitter becomes worthless then musk loses everything . If it thrives, Musk's stake could be worth more when it reemerges. https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2009/06/02/3-bankruptcies-that-actually-helped-investors.aspx

Agree the 12 billion doesn’t go away. But if it’s real then that’s a capital markers activity and not a bankruptcy activity. You just issue new equity to pay off short term cash flow needs and/or to directly pay off debt.

Judges have some leeway to change rates on loan but for the most part their going to wipe out the equity.

And plenty of debt holders do debt for equity swaps and can run twitter so theirs no reason to think the debtors needs to give Musks something to keep the company running. If Musks is in violation of his loan covenents and refuses to raise more capital to make good on his covenents then the debt holders are just going to take the company and go give some equity to the ex-ceo to run the company. No reason to give Musks a stake.

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