Entrepreneur Elon Musk has parted ways with Tesla shares worth around $7 billion. He wants to prevent a possible emergency sale.
In connection with the takeover dispute with Twitter, US billionaire Elon Musk sold nearly US$7 billion worth of shares in his electric car company Tesla. According to documents released by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk sold around 7.9 million Tesla shares in recent days.
Musk made it clear on Twitter that the sale of Tesla shares was related to the dispute over the acquisition of the short message service. “In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners disagree, it is important to avoid a forced sale of Tesla stock,” the businessman wrote.
“No further Tesla sales are planned after today.”
Musk announced a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in April and sold Tesla shares for $8.5 billion in preparation for the deal. At the time, he tweeted: “No further Tesla sales planned after today.”
However, on July 8, Musk canceled the Twitter deal due to allegedly “false and misleading” information from the short message service. In particular, the billionaire accuses Twitter of having too few fake and spam accounts on the platform.
Twitter called this rationale “hypocrisy” and wants to take legal action to force Musk to complete the contractually agreed purchase. Musk filed a countersuit last Thursday to defend himself against Twitter’s attempt to force him to buy it.