Billionaire Elon Musk's cost cutting measures at Twitter, to keep at bay the dark cloud of bankruptcy that looms over social media giant, now includes refusing to reimburse vendors expenses worth "millions of dollars" incurred before his turbulent takeover.
Since Elon Musk had not "authorisied" the hundreds of thousands of dollars in travel invoices that former executives of the company had raked up, he is now refusing to pay travel vendors for those bills, employees, both past and present, told New York Times.
Twitter staff have since avoided the calls of the travel vendors; the report claimed.
Musk's cost-cutting rampage included firing close to 3,700 people as well as conducting a sweeping examination of all types of other costs at the company. Corporate credit cards for Twitter employees have also been shut off, the report said.
Among what has suffered Musk's scrutiny include costs that support Twitter's underlying infrastructure, real estate and even the company's normally lavish in-office cafeteria food, the report added.
While these ruthless cuts have brought down Twitter's spending, the report said, the moves have evoked dissatisfaction within, especially from some vendors who are owed millions of dollars in back payments.
Earlier this month, on his first mass call with employees, Elon Musk had said that he could not rule out the possibility of Twitter going bankrupt, a mere two weeks after buying it for $44 billion.
That same day in his first company-wide email, Musk warned that Twitter would not be able to "survive the upcoming economic downturn" if it fails to boost subscription revenue to offset falling advertising income, Reuters reported.
Twitter's changes under Musk, which include content moderation, delisting the company's stock, layoffs and verification subscriptions, all point to a desperate attempt by the world's richest man, whose losses for 2022 topped $100 billion, to counter Twitter's "massive" revenue drop.
