Elon Musk sells $6.9bn of Tesla shares as Twitter lawsuit looms

The additional 7.92 million Tesla shares were sold by Tesla CEO Elon Musk for about $6.88 billion (£5.7 billion). The sales took place last week during the company’s annual shareholder meeting, according to regulatory papers.

According to Musk, he needs the money in case he has to pay $44 billion for Twitter. The multi-billionaire is now embroiled in a legal dispute with the social media platform after announcing last month that he would withdraw from a deal to buy it.

The most recent transactions occurred on August 5, 8, and 9, according to six documents submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

After the share sale was made public, Mr. Musk was questioned in a tweet about whether he had finished selling Tesla shares.

When questioned by another user if he would repurchase Tesla stock in the event that the Twitter acquisition does not take place, Mr. Musk said, “Absolutely.” After Mr. Musk declared in July that he would give up on trying to acquire Twitter, the company filed a lawsuit against him.

The company is being accused of concealing information relating to phoney accounts held by the world’s richest man.

A US judge ruled last month that the trial for Twitter’s lawsuit against Mr. Musk will take place in October. In order to complete the transaction at the agreed-upon share price of $54.20, Twitter is hoping that the court will order Mr. Musk to

Though Mr. Musk’s countersuit against Twitter’s specifics hasn’t been made public,

Also in July, Twitter disclosed that between April and June, it had spent $33 million on the potential transaction.

Furthermore, it noted that there were currently 237 million active monthly users, which was worse than anticipated.

Tesla said last month that it had sold off 75% of its Bitcoin, which had a market value of $2 billion at the end of 2021. Last year, there was a commotion when the company disclosed a big investment in the largest cryptocurrency in the world. Tesla claimed to have bought fiat currency with the $936 million it received from its Bitcoin sales.