Tesla founder Elon Musk has again sold shares in the American electric car manufacturer. This time he sold $6.9 billion in securities. According to documents released by the US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday, the billionaire sold around 7.9 million Tesla shares between Friday and yesterday. According to calculations, Musk now holds just under 15 percent of Tesla shares.
The funds could be used to fund a possible Twitter takeover if he loses the legal battle with the short message service, he said. "In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don't go along, it's important to avoid a fire sale of Tesla stock," the entrepreneur wrote. Further sales are not planned.
Securities sold totaling $32 billion
Musk announced a $44 billion takeover of Twitter in April and has already sold $8.5 billion worth of Tesla stock. At the time, he tweeted: "No more Tesla sales planned after today."
"Wall Street will read from this poker move that the odds of a Twitter deal are now more likely," tweeted Dan Ives, analyst at Wedbush Securities. With the most recent sales, Musk has sold a total of about $32 billion in Tesla stock in less than a year.
Dispute with Twitter
On July 8, Musk dropped the Twitter deal because of allegedly "false and misleading" information from the short message service. The richest man in the world accuses Twitter, among other things, of having reported too few spam or fake accounts on the platform.
In a lawsuit filed last week against the completion of the purchase, Musk argued that the actual number of users who can be served advertising on the platform is far below the number stated by the company. Twitter also withheld information to "prevent the fraud from being uncovered," it said.
Possible judicial defeat
Twitter described this as "hypocrisy" and wants to take legal action to force Musk to complete the contractually agreed purchase. Musk's allegations were rejected as inaccurate and implausible and it was confirmed that the takeover would also be enforced against Musk's resistance.
Observers consider a judicial defeat of the Tesla founder to be quite conceivable. It is also possible that the multi-billionaire would have to pay Twitter a contractual penalty of up to one billion dollars.
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