Tesla CEO Elon Musk has sold nearly $4 billion worth of shares in the electric vehicle manufacturer. The sale came just days after closing its acquisition of social media company Twitter.
Musk sold 19.5 million Tesla shares, according to documents from the US stock market regulator SEC. The last time Musk sold some of his shares in Tesla was in August. The Tesla CEO then indicated that he would no longer sell shares of the maker of electric cars. The documents did not show whether the transactions were planned in advance.
big debt
Musk took on billions of dollars in debt to pay for Twitter’s $44 billion acquisition. He also previously sold $15.5 billion worth of Tesla stock. Musk is under pressure to cut costs at the company he says he has overpaid.
The billionaire agreed to pay $54.20 per share to Twitter in April, just before the markets plummeted. He then spent months trying to get out of the deal, claiming that the company had misled him about the number of fake accounts. Twitter then filed a lawsuit to force Musk to honor his agreement, after which Musk relented.
To reduce costs fired Musk already half of Twitter’s staff. The richest person in the world, who also leads three other companies in addition to Tesla, also dismissed the entire board of Twitter to become interim CEO himself. Since Musk took over, several large companies discontinued their ads on the platform, pending how the medium develops under the billionaire’s leadership.
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