Elon Musk sells almost $4bn Tesla shares after acquiring Twitter

Elon Musk has sold $3.95 billion worth of shares in his electric car company, Tesla, after finalising his $44 billion Twitter acquisition.

Mr Musk sold 19.5 million shares of Tesla for a total amount of $3.95 billion, according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing released on Tuesday.

The sale, according to the filing, was completed in 38 transactions on November 4, 7 and 8, days after Mr Musk completed his $44 billion Twitter acquisition.

The latest share sale leaves Mr Musk with a stake of roughly 14 per cent in Tesla, according to a Reuters report. The report said Tesla has lost nearly half its market value and Musk’s net worth slumped by $70 billion ever since he bid for Twitter in April.

Mr Musk now has a net worth of $197.4 billion, according to Forbes.

Mr Musk has sold nearly $20 billion worth of his stock in Tesla since he initially invested to buy Twitter in April. He sold $8.5bn worth of Tesla shares in April and around $6.9 billion in August.

After his sales in April, Mr Musk said at the time that there were no further sales planned.

In August, before Twitter’s legal action finally sealed the deal for the takeover, Mr Musk said that he was done selling and that those shares were offloaded in case he was forced to buy Twitter.

“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,” Mr Musk tweeted in August.

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Last Month, Mr Musk acquired Twitter after finalising his $44 billion deal to buy the company. Immediately after acquiring the company, he fired the company’s top executives.

Twitter Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal and legal affairs and policy chief Vijaya Gadde were reportedly removed from their posts.

Messrs Agrawal and Segal were escorted out of Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters after the deal closed, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, in the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing released last Monday, Mr Musk dissolved the company’s board and named himself the sole director of the company.

“It said in accordance with the terms of the Merger Agreement, effective as of the effective time of the Merger, the following persons, who were directors of Twitter prior to the effective time of the Merger, are no longer directors of Twitter.

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“Bret Taylor, Parag Agrawal, Omid Kordestani, David Rosenblatt, Martha Lane Fox, Patrick Pichette, Egon Durban, Fei-Fei Li and Mimi Alemayehou,” Mr Musk said in the filing.

Last Tuesday, Mr Musk announced that the platform will start charging users $8 monthly for its blue verification mark.

“Twitter’s current lords and peasants system for who has or doesn’t have a blue checkmark is bullshit.

“Power to the people! Blue for $8/month. Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity, ” Mr Musk said in a tweet.