Elon Musk sells Tesla shares worth nearly $7 billion

Tesla boss Elon Musk and Twitter are locked in a legal battle over the former’s effort to walk away from the April agreement to buy the company.

CEO Elon Musk sold Tesla shares worth nearly $7 billion amid a high-stakes legal battle going on with Twitter over a $44 billion buyout deal, as per legal filing published on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website. Between August 5 and 9, the entrepreneur sold some 7.9 million shares. The sale of shares come to avoid an event of an emergency sale in case Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through.

Tesla boss Musk and Twitter are locked in a legal battle over the former’s effort to walk away from the April agreement to buy the company, and a judge has ordered that a trial will begin in October. Musk on the other hand, has filed a countersuit, accusing Twitter of fraud and alleging the social media platform misled him about key aspects of its business before he agreed to a $44 billion buyout.

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This comes after Musk sold around $8.5 billion worth of shares in the EV maker in April as he was preparing to finance the Twitter buyout deal. At that time, Musk has tweeted, “No further TSLA sales planned after today.” Whereas, about his latest sale of Tesla stocks, the entrepreneur has tweeted, “In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners don’t come through, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock.”

Last month, Musk asked a judge to schedule a five-day Twitter trial to begin on October 17, and not October 10 as requested by Twitter Inc, to resolve his bid to walk away from his $44 billion deal to acquire the social media platform.

Musk has also accused Twitter of refusing to immediately provide documents such as manuals and policies regarding active daily user calculations and artificial intelligence and “all items in the data room.”

First Published Date: 10 Aug 2022, 12:15 PM IST