Musk warns that Twitter could go bankrupt

Twitter’s new owner, Elon Musk, raised the possibility of the social media platform going bankrupt on Thursday, capping a chaotic day that included a warning from a US regulator and the departure of top executives seen as future leaders.

The billionaire said in a call to Twitter employees that he could not rule out bankruptcy, reported BloombergNewstwo weeks after buying it for 44,000 million dollars, an operation that, according to credit experts, left the firm’s finances in a precarious situation.

Two executives – Yoel Roth and Robin Wheeler – who moderated a Twitter Spaces chat with Musk on Wednesday as he tried to assuage advertisers’ concerns have resigned, he told Reuters a person close to the matter.

Roth and Wheeler did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Bloomberg and the technology site Platformer first reported the departures. Earlier in the day, Twitter chief security officer Lea Kissner tweeted that she had resigned.

Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty have also resigned, according to an internal message posted Thursday on Twitter’s Slack messaging system by a lawyer on their privacy team and viewed by Reuters.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it was watching Twitter with “deep concern” following the resignation of these three privacy and compliance officers. These resignations potentially put Twitter at risk of violating regulatory orders.

In his first meeting with all Twitter employees on Thursday afternoon, Musk warned that the company could lose billions of dollars next year, reported Information.

Twitter did not respond to requests for comment about a possible bankruptcy, the FTC warning or the exits.

Wheeler was the face of Twitter for publicity after Musk took over. Roth, who was head of security and integrity at Twitter, said the company reduced views of harmful content in search results by 95% compared to before the acquisition.

Musk, who ruthlessly moved to clean house after taking over Twitter for $44 billion on Oct. 27, said the company is losing more than $4 million a day, largely because advertisers have started run away once he took over.

Musk has saddled Twitter with $13 billion in debt, on which he has to pay interest totaling nearly $1.2 billion over the next 12 months. The payments exceed Twitter’s most recent cash flow, which stood at $1.1 billion at the end of June.

Musk last week announced plans to cut his workforce in half, vowed to end fake accounts and is charging $8 a month for the Twitter Blue service, which will include a blue verification stamp.

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