Elon Musk took the stand Friday in San Francisco during a trial. He is accused of fraud by investors for having tweeted more than four years ago that he intended to take Tesla out of the stock market.
Dark suit, white shirt and tie, he defended for half an hour his way of communicating on Twitter and his accomplishments at the head of the automotive group. His testimony is due to continue on Monday.
The boss of Tesla – and of Twitter, since the end of October – had created amazement on August 7, 2018 by saying that he wanted to withdraw his group from the Stock Exchange at a price of 420 dollars per share, then that the financing was “secured”. “Elon Musk, (then) CEO of Tesla, lied, and his lies caused people to lose millions of dollars,” Nicholas Porritt, attorney for the class action plaintiffs, said on Wednesday.
Accused of price manipulation
On August 10, 2018, they filed a complaint against the business executive for having “artificially manipulated the price of Tesla’s stock in order to completely ruin investors” who were betting on the price drop.
These downward speculations “should be illegal”, asserted Elon Musk, questioned by Nicholas Porritt on Friday about his opinion concerning this type of investor. “These are bad people who steal money from small investors. They want Tesla to die (…) and they are ready to do anything to kill companies, it’s evil”, he continued to l intention of the jury.
“It’s not a fraud”
His lawyer Alexander Spiro assured Wednesday that Elon Musk had every intention of taking Tesla out of the stock market and had no doubts about its financing capabilities, thanks to assurances from the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.
The tweet was written “hastily”, the choice of words was “reckless”, but “it’s not a fraud”, he had hammered. On Friday, the plaintiffs’ lawyer sought to show that Elon Musk and his entourage were well aware of the consequences of his unbridled volubility on Twitter.
He referred to one of his tweets from July 2018, when he called a British caver who had criticized him a “pedo guy”. “Have you taken a break from Twitter?” asked Nicholas Porritt, referring to advice to that effect from a senior Tesla official and an investor.
“I don’t think so,” replied the billionaire. Tweeting “is the most democratic way to communicate. It gives the same access to information to all investors, big or small,” he explained.
Market reaction deemed unpredictable
He also said market reactions to his tweets were often unpredictable, and took an opportunity to recall how difficult 2018 was for Tesla. “I did not sleep at the factory by choice, but by obligation”, he insisted, before adding that the fact of being listed on the stock exchange represented an additional constraint, since the company was exposed to attacks. investors.
Tesla shares jumped to $386.48 just after the offending tweets. On August 16, it was down to $335.45, according to the figures given to the jury on Tuesday by Judge Edward Chen, far from the $420 per share mentioned by Musk. The trial is expected to last three weeks.
ats/ami
