The billionaire businessman Elon Musk sold shares of Tesla for an amount of almost 7 billion dollars, according to a legal document disclosed on Tuesday, in the middle of a legal battle with Twitter about a purchase agreement for 44 billion dollars.
The founder of the car manufacturer Tesla sold some 7.9 million shares between August 5 and 9, according to the document published on the website of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the American regulatory body. .
In the (hopefully unlikely) event that Twitter forces this deal to close and some equity partners do not participate, it is important to avoid an emergency sale of Tesla stock,” Musk, the world’s richest man, wrote. Tuesday on Twitter.
Twitter is waging a legal battle with the temperamental Musk over his attempt to get out of an April deal to buy the red social.
Musk had pledged to offer $54.20 for each Twitter share, but later accused Twitter of fraud, alleging that the platform misled him about key aspects of the company before agreeing to buy it for $44 billion.
8.5 billion dollars already sold
In April, the tycoon had already sold shares of his automotive group for about 8.5 billion dollars to prepare for the acquisition of the social network.
At the time, he had assured that there would be no further sales of Tesla securities.
Musk now challenges the CEO of TwitterParag Agrawal, to “publicly discuss the percentage of fake accounts” on the network by asking him to “prove to the public that Twitter has less than 5% of fake or unwanted daily users.”
The legal battle will begin on October 17 before a court specializing in commercial law in the state of Delaware, and will last five days.
As soon as the acquisition agreement was broken, Twitter sued the richest man on the planet to force him to fulfill his promise.
Musk countersued in the same court, demanding that he release him from that pact and order Twitter to pay him damages.
The chances that the owner of Tesla will end up paying only the damages for breaking the agreement (one billion dollars), or that the court will satisfy his demands are considered very low by experts.
Twitter shareholders plan to meet on September 13 to authorize or not this acquisition, which would mean significant added value for them.
Between the general stock market slump in recent months, the slump in social media ad revenue linked to the economy, and public criticism of Elon Musk, shares of Twitter had plunged to around $32 a day. July 11.
At the close on Tuesday night, the Twitter stock ended at $42.83, down 0.26%, and the Tesla fell 2.44% to $850.
At the end of July, the automotive group published solid results for the second quarter of the year, with a profit of 2.3 billion dollars in the period, almost double that of the same period last year.
However, for the first time since the beginning of 2021, his earnings fell short of a new record. And its turnover, of 16 thousand 900 million dollars, was also lower than expected MAAZ
