More Than $7bn Worth Of Tesla Shares Sold

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The owner of Tesla, Elon Musk has sold $7 billion worth of Tesla shares, this is according to legal filings published on Tuesday, amid a high-stakes legal battle with Twitter over a $44 billion buyout deal.

According to the fillings published by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Website, Tesla’s boss sold some 7.9 million shares between August 5 and 9.

On Tuesday Musk wrote on Twitter “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.”

There is a locked-in legal battle between Twitter and the mercurial Tesla boss over his effort to walk away from the April agreement to buy the company, and a judge has ordered that a trial will begin in October.

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, Musk then filed a countersuit against Twitter.

The move comes after Musk sold around $8.5 billion worth of shares in the electric carmaker in April as he was preparing to finance the Twitter deal. He tweeted at the time: “No further TSLA sales planned after today.”

[AFP]