Tech billionaire Elon Musk does not want to take out loans secured with his shares for the planned Twitter takeover after all.

Originally, he wanted to get $ 12.5 billion (11.7 billion euros) in this way.

However, a statement from the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday said that Musk wanted to contribute this amount in another way.

The boss of the electric car manufacturer Tesla had presented financing commitments of over 46 billion dollars for the Twitter deal.

The waiver of the equity-backed loans was already expected after Tesla's share price fell significantly.

After the switch, Musk now wants to contribute $33.5 billion in addition to other loans.

In order to raise this amount, he is already bringing various investors on board.

Jack Dorsey is to contribute his shares

According to the statement, Musk also wants to talk to longtime Twitter boss Jack Dorsey about bringing his shares into a deal to continue to be involved in Twitter after the acquisition is complete.

According to the latest information, Dorsey holds around 2.5 percent of Twitter, Musk has bought a good nine percent share in recent months.

Twitter shares rose more than 6 percent in after-hours trading after the announcement.

At just under $40, the price was still well below the $54.20 per share that Musk had promised the shareholders.

Musk recently declared the deal suspended, but from Twitter's point of view he cannot decide that unilaterally - and the service insists on the deal.

Industry analyst Dan Ives saw the switch as good news.

Musk is continuing to work on the funding and the change is a "good move" that will ease the burden on Twitter after the takeover, the pundit at finance firm Wedbush wrote.

Contact details used for advertising

Against the background of the takeover, which was not running smoothly, Twitter has now suffered a defeat in court: According to allegations by the US government, the news service has used user contact data for advertising – this is now costing the online service 150 million dollars.

Twitter agreed to a fine of this amount to settle a data protection lawsuit by American authorities.

In the lawsuit, released Wednesday, the FTC and the Justice Department allege that Twitter asked users for their phone numbers and email addresses on the grounds that it would help secure their accounts.

Online services access e-mails or messages to mobile phone numbers, for example to register on new devices, forgotten passwords or to unlock blocked profiles again.

Twitter also used the data to show users personalized ads, the lawsuit said.

The contact information collected for other purposes was thus misused.

Between May 2013 and September 2019, more than 140 million users shared their phone numbers or email addresses with Twitter, the US government said.

She saw the service's approach as a violation of an agreement from 2011, in which Twitter had committed itself, among other things, to transparency in data protection.

The service was therefore considered a repeat offender by the government, which opened the door for a hefty payment.

With 150 million dollars (140 million euros), however, Twitter comes off significantly cheaper than Facebook in 2019. At that time, US authorities also accused the world's largest online network of having violated previous data protection obligations.

Facebook paid five billion dollars and agreed to stricter data protection supervision.

Among other things, Twitter must now have data protection checked by experts appointed by the FTC and report incidents to the authority within 30 days.

In addition, Twitter is said to offer a method for secure registration that works without a telephone number.