Elon Musks Twitter deal could tank the leveraged buyout market

Elon Musk’s antics have made it hard for his banks — Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Barclays — to sell the debt required to do the Twitter deal. So they’re just going to hold it, all $13 billion of it, The Wall Street Journal reports. Truly a next-level “hold-my-beer” move, because it threatens to bring leveraged buyouts to a halt.

Typically, a bank sells the debt used to create a buyout, and moves on to the next deal. But since they’re holding Musk’s beers, they don’t have a free hand to hold anyone else’s. Or, as The WSJ puts it, “The Twitter move threatens to bring the faltering leveraged-buyout pipeline to a standstill by tying up capital that Wall Street could otherwise use to back new deals.”

Part of the reason for holding...

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