When Twitter’s board abruptly changed its tune on his offer to buy the company — from poison pill to LFG!! — bankers surmised what had happened. Goldman Sachs, on behalf of Twitter, had gone out and asked every other potential buyer it could think of to swoop in and make a better deal — and gotten a hard pass. “They weren’t able to find anyone else who was remotely interested,” the banker told me.

Goldman would have to sign what’s known as a “fairness opinion” that Twitter was getting the best deal it could. “You don’t want to have shareholders say, ‘You didn’t even ask Google,’” the banker added. “So that’s the only possible way — if literally no one wanted this.”Most people consider Musk’s purchase of Twitter a fait accompli. But the deal hasn’t closed, and on Wall Street, many are still wondering why the CEO of Tesla would even want Twitter, an albatross whose costs are growing twice as fast as its sales.

What Wall Street Is Whispering About Elon Musk and Twitter