Elon Musk says he secured $46.5 billion to buy Twitter

Elon Musk says he has lined up $46.5 billion in financing to buy Twitter, and he is trying to negotiate an agreement with the company.

Last week, Musk announced an offer to buy the social media company for $54.20 per share, or about $43 billion. At the time, he did say how he would finance the acquisition.

The Tesla CEO says Thursday in documents filed with US securities regulators that he’s exploring what’s known as a tender offer to buy all of the social media platform’s common stock for $54.20 per share in cash. Under a tender offer, Musk, who owns about 9 per cent of Twitter shares, would take his offer directly to other shareholders, bypassing the board.

But Musk hasn’t decided yet whether to do that.

The documents say Twitter has not responded to Musk’s proposal.

Last week Twitter’s board adopted a poison pill defence that could make a takeover attempt prohibitively expensive.

The filing states that entities related to (Musk) have received commitment letters committing to provide an aggregate of approximately $46.5 billion.