Irish Examiner view: Day of reckoning for regular loss-maker

Elon Musk declared that 'the bird is freed' after paying $44bn to buy Twitter. But the firm is bleeding money and faces further challenges in his ownership and could yet turn into a dead duck

Elon Musk may be suffering buyer’s remorse after paying out an eye-watering $44bn to buy social the Twitter media platform. Picture: Jeff Chiu/AP

There have been increasing indications of buyer’s remorse emanating from the desk of Elon Musk since he paid the eye-watering, headline-gathering sum of $44bn (€44.4bn) on October 27 for Twitter, a company which lost $221m last year, and has bled money in seven out of the nine years that it has been listed on the New York stock exchange. A company, also, which has undergone a longstanding debate about its user numbers.

For the rest of us, that financial performance would spell ruin. But when you are a “Master of the Universe” — the phrase coined by Tom Wolfe in the prophetic 1980s serialised novel The Bonfire of the Vanities — you can see other things.