As Elon Musk Cuts Costs at Twitter, Some Bills Are Going Unpaid

[Kennah]

Source: NY Times

Before Elon Musk bought Twitter last month, the company’s executives had racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel invoices that the social media service planned to pay.

But once Mr. Musk took over the company, he refused to reimburse travel vendors for those bills, current and former Twitter employees said. Mr. Musk’s staff said the services were authorized by the company’s former management and not by him. His staff have since avoided the calls of the travel vendors, the people said.

Mr. Musk has embarked on an enormous cost-cutting campaign since closing his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. He initially slashed half of the company’s 7,500-person work force, fired workers and continued with layoffs as recently as Monday. But he has also conducted a sweeping examination of all types of other costs at the company, instructing staff to review, renegotiate and in some cases not pay Twitter’s outside vendors at all, eight people with knowledge of the matter said.

Mr. Musk and his advisers have trained their sights on computing costs that support Twitter’s underlying infrastructure, travel expenses, software services, real estate and even the company’s normally lavish in-office cafeteria food. Twitter’s spending has dropped, but the moves have spurred complaints from insiders — as well as from some vendors who are owed millions of dollars in back payments.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/22/technology/elon-musk-twitter-cost-cutting.html

---

The Trump playbook. Don't pay your bills.

[msongs]

1. time to start picketing tesla dealers as a matter of public awareness nt

[MicaelS]

5. There are NO Tesla dealers. None.

Just showrooms, and delivery centers.

[msongs]

7. then showrooms it is, there's at least two of em in hawaii nt

[Ziggysmom]

2. Oh nice. He's adopted the tRumpy playbook of not paying his legitimate bills. Good job

muskRat!

[PortTack]

4. Beat me to it! Just like tfg..stiffs everybody

[XorXor]

3. Obviously they should pay the vendors for services rendered

But WTF was going on that the previous execs managed to rack up hundreds of thousands of dollars of travel invoices? I'm curious what the details of those are. Such as over what period of time and how many people.

[Kennah]

17. Maybe they did pull a fast one on Muskrat

[moniss]

6. When you buy a business you

get it all. Assets and liabilities unless your contract states that any of the assets or liabilities are staying with the old owners or sometimes people try to get creative, like corporate raiders, and they will create a side corporation prior to the sale and move the debts over to that company. After which everybody involved splits up the carcass and bankrupt the entity that has the liabilities. This has also been done, quite successfully (unfortunately), over the years with companies that have pension obligations. The trucking industry engaged in this big time over the course of several decades. They kept buying and selling between themselves and shell corporations divvying up bits and pieces and bundling their Teamster pension obligations to this one and that. So you buy the trucks, real estate and customer contracts but you leave the pension obligations with the carcass that's left. They load up with debt, grab every dime they can and then bankrupt the company and throw the pension obligations back on the Pension Benefit Guaranty program run by the Feds. But they only cover so much also. There are other ills that happened to the Teamsters Pension Fund but the trucking companies did their best to make big promises about the future for workers in order to get the labor. They got the labor up front and then screwed the workers when it came time to make good on the promises. It happens in state and local governments all the time. Make big promises in order to get the labor and then cry poor and demand concessions. The old saying "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" is there for a reason.

[yonder]

8. +1.

[yankee87]

9. Fire sale

I hope someone who knows the business buys Twitter in a fire sale.

[modrepub]

10. Richest Man On The Planet

won't pay his bills. Well, I guess he didn't get rich by spending money.

[James48]

11. Elon Musk is a deadbeat.

Just like his hero.

What a piece of excrement.

[bucolic_frolic]

12. Clear sign bankruptcy is intended and imminent?

[3Hotdogs]

13. My question, did employees buy the tix on company credit card or personal card for reimbursement?

suspect it was on the employee cards, once the phone calls from travel agents.
What a piece of shit.

[twodogsbarking]

14. On a much smaller scale I have seen company owners do about the same thing as Musk.

Then the blame game. Blame whomever you can think of.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

15. Another deadbeat billionaire

[dalton99a]

16. He'll sic lawyers on them

just like Trump

[Hassin Bin Sober]

18. He's going full magat. He doesn't care about image or advertisers.

Because he intends to run the company through bankruptcy, stiff the lenders, turn the site into a giant 4chan, and ultimately massively profit from user data.

What I don’t understand is how the banks/lenders loaned this guy $12 billion dollars and almost immediately started talking about taking a haircut on the deal. And this was before the shit really hit the fan at Twitter.

If you or I went out and borrowed a bunch of money and immediately filed bankruptcy we would be called into court and investigated for bankruptcy fraud. Hopefully the lenders go after his personal assets.