If the squab­bling ever stops over Elon Musk’s re­newed bid to buy Twit­ter, ex­perts say he still faces a huge ob­sta­cle to clos­ing the $44 bil­lion deal: Keep­ing his fi­nanc­ing in place.

Ear­li­er this week, Musk re­versed course and said he’d go through with ac­quir­ing the so­cial me­dia com­pa­ny un­der the same terms he agreed to in April. But af­ter months of tweet­storms and le­gal barbs, there are scars and sus­pi­cions on both sides.

Ex­perts say that be­hind the scenes, banks could be scram­bling to find buy­ers for $12.5 bil­lion in debt from the deal, and Musk is try­ing to hold to­geth­er a group of eq­ui­ty in­vestors that is pitch­ing in bil­lions more. The er­rat­ic bil­lion­aire is on the hook for the rest.

The fight­ing con­tin­ued Thurs­day, when Musk’s at­tor­neys said Twit­ter is re­fus­ing to ac­cept his re­vived bid to buy the com­pa­ny. They sought to de­lay an up­com­ing tri­al on Twit­ter’s law­suit that could force him to com­plete the deal.

But Twit­ter’s at­tor­neys said it’s Musk who is hold­ing every­thing up, and his ef­fort to put the tri­al on hold “is an in­vi­ta­tion to fur­ther mis­chief and de­lay.”

In the end, a judge agreed to give Musk more time to close the deal but said the tri­al will go ahead in No­vem­ber if he doesn’t.

It’s still pos­si­ble the sale could close. But with so much at play, here’s what could throw the deal off track, again:

BANK FI­NANC­ING

A group of banks, in­clud­ing Mor­gan Stan­ley and Bank of Amer­i­ca, signed on to loan $12.5 bil­lion of the mon­ey Musk needs for the deal. In Thurs­day’s court mo­tion, Musk al­leges that Twit­ter doesn’t want to set the law­suit aside be­cause of a “base­less” fear that Musk could fail to get the bank fi­nanc­ing.

“No such fail­ure has oc­curred to date,” the mo­tion said. “Coun­sel for the debt fi­nanc­ing par­ties has ad­vised that each of their clients is pre­pared to hon­or its oblig­a­tions.”

The banks are “es­sen­tial­ly ce­ment­ed” to the deal by sol­id con­tracts, Wed­bush an­a­lyst Dan Ives said. But the debt mar­ket has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly since April. The stock mar­ket has tum­bled, in­fla­tion is high, and in­ter­est rates are up as the Fed­er­al Re­serve tries to slow the econ­o­my.

Banks would sell the debt to in­sti­tu­tion­al in­vestors, but there’s not much ap­petite now to take part in takeovers that sad­dle com­pa­nies with big debts. Banks could be on the hook to make loans them­selves.

“The banks would be re­al­ly hap­py to not to have to take the risk of fund­ing these loans,” said Erik Gor­don, a law and busi­ness pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan. “The agree­ments seem to be very strong, but I think the banks have their lawyers pulling all-nighters try­ing to get them out of it if they can.”

EQ­UI­TY IN­VESTORS

In­vestors who would get eq­ui­ty in Twit­ter are sup­posed to kick in bil­lions. Ives es­ti­mates they had agreed to $15 bil­lion to $16 bil­lion. But some in­vestors may be skit­tish about stay­ing in giv­en the mar­ket changes and Musk’s re­peat­ed ac­cu­sa­tions against Twit­ter about the num­ber of bots on the plat­form.

Qatar’s sov­er­eign wealth fund de­clined com­ment this week on the $375 mil­lion its sub­sidiary pledged in May. Sev­er­al oth­er in­vestors didn’t re­spond to re­quests for com­ment on whether they were still chip­ping in.

Musk’s eq­ui­ty com­mit­ments — in­clud­ing $1 bil­lion from Musk’s friend and Or­a­cle co-founder Lar­ry El­li­son — are on shaki­er ground if any in that di­verse group of back­ers have changed their minds, said Kevin Kaiser, an ad­junct fi­nance pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia’s Whar­ton School.

“No­body knows — I don’t know any­way — what their com­mit­ment is,” Kaiser said. “So are they able to back out? Be­cause if they’re able to back out, he is on the hook.”

MUSK MON­EY

Musk, the world’s rich­est per­son with a net worth of $231 bil­lion ac­cord­ing to Forbes, has to kick in his own mon­ey, but just how much de­pends on how many eq­ui­ty in­vestors stay in.

Most of his wealth is tied up in stock of the elec­tric car com­pa­ny that he runs, Tes­la Inc. Since April, he has sold more than $15 bil­lion worth of Tes­la stock, pre­sum­ably to pay his share.

If any eq­ui­ty in­vestors drop out, though, Musk will ei­ther have to re­place them or throw in more mon­ey, fu­el­ing spec­u­la­tion that he might have to sell more Tes­la shares. Musk’s share of the orig­i­nal deal was about $15.5 bil­lion, Ives es­ti­mat­ed.

THE GUAR­AN­TEE

It’s clear that Twit­ter’s board is very sus­pect of Musk be­cause he has trashed the com­pa­ny for months now, al­leg­ing that it has far few­er dai­ly users than it re­ports to in­vestors, said Gor­don.

That has di­min­ished Twit­ter’s val­ue and made in­vest­ing in the deal less at­trac­tive, he says. And be­cause Musk al­ready tried to back out of the deal once, Twit­ter will want a guar­an­tee of some sort that he won’t back out again.

That, Ives said, is like­ly to be a large chunk of mon­ey held in a non-re­fund­able es­crow ac­count that would go to Twit­ter if Musk doesn’t de­liv­er.

SIGNS OF PROGRESS

There are some signs that the deal will yet go through. Twit­ter says it looks for­ward to clos­ing the deal by Oct. 28. Musk’s de­po­si­tion in the law­suit, sched­uled for Thurs­day in Austin, Texas, was post­poned. Musk’s mo­tion says the bankers are still in. And the orig­i­nal group of in­vestors is not talk­ing pub­licly about bail­ing out.

Kr­ish­er re­port­ed from De­troit, O’Brien from Prov­i­dence, Rhode Is­land.

By TOM KR­ISH­ER and MATT O'BRIEN-AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS