In a surprising move, Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of Tesla Motors, sold nearly 4 billion dollars worth of Tesla shares in the past few days triggering concerns that the new owner of Twitter is facing issues with the finances.
Elon Musk who recently purchased the social networking platform Twitter for 44 billion dollars is the richest person on the planet having a net worth of 179 billion dollars.
The details regarding the offload of Tesla shares by Elon Musk became public when he made regulatory filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The filings with the SEC state that Musk has sold more than 19.5 million shares of electric vehicle manufacturer for an unknown reason.
According to the latest data from Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the personal wealth of the new Twitter CEO drained by 90 billion dollars to settle at 179 billion dollars. Very rarely does his net worth come below 200 billion dollars.
As of now, Elon Musk holds 15 percent shares in Tesla Inc based in Austin, Texas. Tesla Inc which was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003 came under the ownership of Elon Musk in 2004 when he invested $6.5 million into the automobile company. Apart from Tesla Inc, Musk also has ownership stakes in SpaceX, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and Twitter, Inc.
A few days ago, Elon Musk reportedly told that his workload has gone up from 78 hours a week to 120 hours since he took over Twitter in the final week of October 2022. Musk talked about his workload to hedge fund manager Ron Baron when he was attending a conference.
On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk took over Twitter Inc ending months of legal battles and public tit-tats. CEO of Tesla in April 2022 offered to purchase an entire stake in Twitter Inc for 54.20 dollars per share. The Board of Directors of Twitter first resisted the 44 billion dollars by taking policy actions to avoid a hostile takeover.
Later due to pressure from shareholders and other unknown factors, directors agreed to go ahead with the offer from Musk. A few weeks later Elon Musk backed off from the deal citing several technical and non-technical reasons. Elon Musk alleged that the social networking platform was not giving him enough data on the number of bots and spam accounts present on the platform.
As he decided to back off from the acquisition deal, Twitter filed a lawsuit in Delaware Court against Elon Musk stating that he unreasonably backed out of the deal without providing solid reasons. The lawsuit requested the court to force Elon Musk to purchase Twitter for 44 billion dollars.
Delaware Court judge Kathaleen McCormick who heard the initial arguments of the case decided to go ahead with the case and conduct an early trial at the request of Twitter. In between the legal proceedings, Elon Musk signaled his renewed Interest in purchasing Twitter.
Judge Kathaleen McCormick gave Musk time till October 28 to complete the acquisition or warned that the trial will start as soon as possible.
Elon Musk who decided to complete the acquisition on October 27, 2022, fired CEO Parag Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, and legal chief Vijaya Gadde from their positions. A few days ago Twitter Inc decided to lay off nearly half of the entire workforce. Elon Musk wrote on Twitter that the company had no other choice as it was suffering a loss of 4 million dollars every day.
Concerns about the radicalization of Twitter following its acquisition by Elon Musk had forced various celebrities to exit from the social networking platform. Various multinational companies such as Audi, Volkswagen, GM, and United Airlines decided to pause paid adversities and promotion on the social media platform.
