Business & Economy

Musk sells $6.9 billion in Tesla shares to avoid Twitter deal ’emergency’

Washington, Aug 9 (EFE).- Tesla’s billionaire CEO Elon Musk has sold about $6.9 billion worth of shares in the company, saying he needed the cash in the event he is forced to go through with his deal to buy Twitter.

On three days between Aug. 5-9, Musk sold more than 7.9 million shares in Tesla with a total market value of approximately $6.88 billion, according to multiple United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings published Tuesday night.

“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,” Musk tweeted late Tuesday.

At the end of April, Musk said he had “no further TSLA sales planned.”

Despite this week’s sales, possibly the CEO’s biggest on record, the world’s richest man still retains 155 million shares in the electric vehicle manufacturer.

Musk said last weekend that the $44 billion Twitter deal, which he backed out of in early July, could be closed if the company provides him with details on how it estimates the number of fake or spam accounts.

“If Twitter simply provides their method of sampling 100 accounts and how they’re confirmed to be real, the deal should proceed on original terms,” Musk said on Twitter.

He stressed that if, on the contrary, it is shown that the information offered by Twitter to the regulators is false, the operation cannot be closed as agreed.

In early July, Musk announced he was backing out of his buyout of the tech company, to which Twitter responded with a lawsuit to force him to uphold the agreement.

Musk said the social network failed to properly account for the figures on false accounts that he demanded, while Twitter said Musk “refuses to honor his obligations to Twitter and its stockholders because the deal he signed no longer serves his personal interests.”

The trial is set to begin on Oct. 17.

Twitter’s board of directors has invited its shareholders to vote on the buyout on Sep. 13 and has urged them to approve the sale, although it acknowledged that it also depends on the pending litigation with the billionaire. EFE

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