Musk Warns of Twitter Bankruptcy Amid Exit of Top Executives

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

The billionaire said in a call to Twitter employees could not rule out bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported, two weeks after buying it for $44 billionan 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 allay advertisers’ concerns have resigned, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

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, the chief security officer at twitter, Lea Kissnertweeted that he had resigned.

The chief privacy officer, Damien Kieranand the compliance director, Marianne Fogartyalso resigned, according to an internal message posted Thursday on Twitter’s Slack messaging system by a lawyer on its privacy team and seen by Reuters.

The United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC, for its acronym in English) 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, The Information reported.

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

Wheeler was the face of Twitter for the advertising after Musk took over. Roth, who was head of security and integrity on Twitter, claimed that 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 dollars a daylargely because advertisers began to flee once he took over.

Musk has charged Twitter with a debt of 13,000 million dollars, for which he has to pay interest for a total of almost 1,200 million dollars in 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, promised to end fake accounts and is charging $8 a month for the service. Twitter Bluewhich will include a blue verification stamp.