Carlos Barria / Archyde.com
New York TimesA few days ago, it was learned from an informant that in order to reduce expenses, Elon Musk has refused to pay the hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel bills accumulated by Twitter employees before he took over the company. It is reported that Musk has issued an order to slow down or suspend payments to Twitter’s original suppliers and service providers. He asked employees to review and renegotiate with partners, covering areas including computing expenses, travel, software services, venue costs and even office catering. The move sparked dissatisfaction within Twitter and with suppliers, which are said to have defaulted on millions of dollars in payments from some of its partner companies.
In addition, Musk also asked the team to review cooperation with sports leagues such as the NFL and NBA, as well as media companies such as Fox and Condé Nast, and is trying to renegotiate new agreements with companies such as Amazon and Oracle. In the process, employees’ corporate credit cards were deactivated, free lunches were cancelled, and all reimbursements were delayed. Unsurprisingly, none of the checks that Twitter had promised to charities in the past had been cashed.
To acquire Twitter, Musk took out a total of $13 billion in loans and is said to be paying up to $1 billion a year in interest. He once warned employees that “the economic situation ahead is grim” and admitted that the company “bankruptcy is not impossible」。